THE. 




J HCURLE 




Class _G-..44.3_ 
Book -G 'g S" 
GopightN" 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSfR 




V 



THE 

SHADOW-SHOW 



BY 

J. H. CURLE 



For in and out, above, about, below , 
'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-Show 
Played in a Box, whose Candle is the Sun, 
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go'* 

RUBAIYAT 




NEW Xai^ YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






COPYRIGHT, 1920, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



vJuN 18 mO 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



©CU576747 



FOREWORD 

This world of ours is the Shadow-Show. We 
men and women are the silhouettes on the cur- 
tain. Adjusted to hidden wires by the finest 
mechanism, we are seen to be dancing furiously; 
and this we call life. 

A Shadow-Show indeed ! And the sense of our 
tmreality at times overpowering. What are we? 
Whence do we come? What does it all mean? 
The stage is fantastic, and the players; the only 
real thing is that mechanism of wires which 
science calls the "'reign of law.'' 

'Tor man is man, and master of his fate," sings 
the poet, and Smiles, Lubbock, and other genial 
and wealthy persons chortle in the same strain. 
But old Omar knew better, and men of the calibre 
of JEschylus and Shakespeare and Ibsen have 
always known; free-will is very nearly an illu- 
sion. 

We are puppets. We are the sum of all dead 
men, the sport of all past happenings. We are 
present links in the endless chain of cause and 
effect, and as our structure is, so does our life 
inexorably unfold. 

Given the structure a a man will rush into the 



vi FOREWORD 

world's arena and succeed; given jS some weak 
link is indicated, and he will fail. An atom the 
more, and a man will enter the Church, marry, 
and breed an immense family; one the less, and 
he will find himself in prison for burglary. A 
Lord Shaftesbury and a Charles Peace, a Father 
Damien and a Ravachol — in how much do they 
differ? In a cerebral convolution the eye cannot 
measure, in a certain molecular instability, so 
inevitable, were it understood, as to chasten our 
judgments for evermore. "To understand all is 
to pardon all," said the wise Frenchman, giving 
voice to the profoundest of our maxims. 

The reign of law is inexorable. The wires 
that hold us never break. Yet from that source 
whence all things flow, a source no man knoweth, 
come to us philosophy and humour — alleviatives ; 
they are the an ti- friction grease for the mechan- 
ism, and I commend them at all times to your 
use. 

The stage setting of the Shadow-Show is ex- 
traordinarily beautiful. A dawn on the Karroo, 
the higher Alps outlined by moon-light, a spring 
morning in Kashmir, a drive over the uplands of 
Java, a bougainvillsea seen in the Dictator's 
garden at Caracas, are worth all the pains of our 
puppetdom. A favoured one, I have stood in 
the wings nearly all my life, and have seen the 
mounting of a thousand tableaux; I have, indeed, 



FOREWORD vii 

viewed our beautiful, unreal world from end to 
end. 

Here, then, I present myself — as Showman; 
whose moods pass, as the shadows themselves^ 
whose assets are travel and reflection — knowledge 
of many lands and many peoples; whose qualities 
are a little philosophy, a little humour, some 
tolerance, a worship of Nature, and a love of his 
fellows; yet, such as these things are, they came 
to me slowly, apprenticeship to the Shadow-Show 
being a life's work. 

J. H. C 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I A Showman in the Making ... 13 

II In South Africa 35 

III The Tortoise's Head 55 

IV "Life's Liquor" 74 

V Women 95 

VI Glimpses of the East 113 

VII The Dream City of Samarkand . . 148 

VIII Wanderings in South America . . 182 

IX "By the Waters of Babylon", . . 212 

X A Grave in Samoa 225 

XI Mine Own People 239 

XII "Through the Seventh Gate" . . 272 

The Frontispiece is from a photograph hy Lehnert and Landrock, of 
Tunis, and is reproduced here by their consent* 



THE SHADOW-SHOW 



THE SHADOW-SHOW 



CHAPTER I 

A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 

I HAVE led a glorious life. Of all the men I 
have known, who has been so free, who has 
revelled in this beautiful world as I? What 
dawns I have seen! What rivers I have sailed 
on, down to what seas! I have traversed the 
forests, the food belts, the deserts, the high 
ranges; I have passed from the tropics to the 
arctic, from the tundra plains back to the rice 
fields; I have been to all the ends of the earth, 
and look back on a great and splendid phantas- 
magoria. 

My thoughts will not be controlled to-night, 
and as I write, on this sick-bed in Warsaw, it is 
the little incidents that crowd on me. Well ! I 
take them as they come. 

On a Christmas afternoon, in the country be- 
hind Manilla, I watched cock-fighting. In a great 
bamboo structure some two thousand Filipinos 
and myself sat, lost to the world. There were 

13 



14 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

a hundred cocks, the din was hideous, and the 
betting high. I have spent many a worse Christ- 
mas. X 

I was in the first motor-car that penetrated the 
sombre Death Valley, on the Nevada boundary 
line. We went to value a "prospect" in the 
Funeral Range that I had already named the 
''Shadow"; but it failed to satisfy, and we re- 
turned over the great desert. 

Passing once through Chicago, at the height 
of her municipal corruption, the posters of a 
'Trench Ball," patronized by the city fathers, 
took me. My baggage had gone astray; but I 
went to the Jews with $2.50, and presently ap- 
peared, in hired garments, at the ball. Waiving 
introductions, I danced through the programme, 
and while the band played the newly composed 
"Georgia Camp Meeting," supped with a noto- 
riously corrupt alderman and two ladies of less 
municipal status than humour, spending one of 
the nights of my life. 

I lay in the Connemara Hotel, Madras. It 
was the dead of a stifling night, and save for my 
waving punkah all was still. Sitting outside my 
door, a wretched, casteless creature pulled this 
punkah the long night through, receiving for her 
labour, and that thankfully, the sum of four- 
pence. A woman did this ! while I, a strong man, 
my vitals primed with boiled brisket of beef, lay 



A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING Ifi 

easy in my bed. And as I lay I reflected why 
these things should be; why one must be up and 
the other down, yet in what — if we both stood 
at the Judgment Seat — in what was I this poor 
creature's real superior? The hours passed. The 
punkah moved steadily; it was now six o'clock, 
and the dawn. I rose, and taking from the table 
a tin of chocolates, laid it in her hands. She 
tasted one, and began to wolf them greedily 
down: "Joy cometh in the morning" was written 
on her hideous physiognomy. 

I was breakfasting in a garden. It lay in Seoul, 
capital of Korea, and was enclosed on three sides 
by the palace walls. My host told me of the 
intrigues of the court, the struggle against the 
domination of Japan, the murder, by Japanese, 
of the Empress, and the schemes of the Emperor 
to be free. Pointing to the roof of a small pavil- 
ion, but thirty yards distant, he said: 'The Em- 
peror stays in there, in terror of his life. Three 
nobles, sworn to guard his person, sleep by turns 
on the threshold. Thrice he has tried to escape 
over the wall and seek protection with me. The 
last time, late one night, he nearly succeeded. 
His hand was on the coping, and his royal outline 
stood out clearly. But before he could jump, rude 
Japanese hands reached up, clutching him, and 
with a cry he fell backward" 

At two o'clock, one night in the year 1902, 



16 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

there was a running of police through the streets 
of Lima; their whistles were blowing, and some- 
where beyond the plaza a bugle rang out. What 
did the authorities fear? Was it those shrill cries 
raised in the night? It is true that the sinister 
and pock-marked Casceres, ex-President, was back 
that week from Paris; it is true, moreover, that 
a political rival from the mountains was just then 
threatening to march on the capital But that 
night, at least, Peru was not in danger. A breath- 
less figure, lacking coat and hat, that stole within 
the deep shadows of the cathedral, and later 
reached Hotel Maury unseen, could, if he would, 
have thrown some light. 

I was staying in Melbourne, and a request came 
from a leading paper to write a critical article on 
the mining industry of Victoria. "Ah," I thought, 
master of my subject, "I will show these colonials 
how things are done!" I wrote, and sent it in. 
It duly appeared; not my strong and reasoned 
critique, but an emasculated thing of appalling 
flabbiness. 

"Why have you done this?" I asked. "I had 
your word you would alter nothing." 

"Yes, we know; but we didn't like to offend 
advertisers. But your article is causing discus* 
sion; here are three letters for you." 

I opened them. Two were from lunatics, and 
incoherent; and the third, that took an hour to 



A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING IT 

read, from a geological crank. It was quite irrele- 
vant, and left me mentally dazed and jaded. 

My article fell utterly flat, and remained so; 
but that it was at least read and pondered over 
by three madmen I have to this day irrefragable 
evidence. 

Here, again, is the bull-ring in the City of 
Mexico. The procession has entered, the ''Car- 
men" music has been played, and Mazzantini, 
the famous torero^ has been acclaimed; bulls lie 
dead, and a dozen gored horses have been dragged 
away. Ten, it may be twenty, thousand people 
crowd the tiers, the men sodden with pulque^ the 
women gloating on the flowing blood and longing 
for a human death. All are shouting, swearing, 
spewing, and the reek of gore and of filthy, bestial, 
gloating humanity is almost overpowering. But 
above the roofs utterly pure and lovely in the 
southern sky, two snowpeaks stand out, mute, yet 
insistently calling men's thoughts to the best. A 
vivid contrast this, if ever there was contrast. 
Yet it was more; this clinching of abstractions 
was the old struggle of good with evil, of Ormuzd 
with Ahriman, fighting for men's souls on the 
sunlit plains of Old Mexico, 

Who, having seen, has not felt the glory of the 
high white mountains? Not alone of these two 
in Mexico — Popocatapetl, and that other which 
may not be spelled — ^but of Chimborazo, seen 



18 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

from the coasts of Ecuador, of Aconcagua, from 
the bay of Valparaiso, of Illimani and Sorata, 
rising from the Bolivian plateau, of Kinchin- 
junga, seen from Darjeeling, of that ring that 
shuts in Kashmir, of Elburz and the Jungfrau, 
of Fuji, seen from Lake Hakone of Rainier, ris- 
ing behind Tacoma, and of Egmont in the country 
beyond New Plymouth. 

But for the mountain view most glorious, 
stand in Arequipa's plaza^ in Southem Peru; the 
peaks that rise up behind her cathedral are peer- 
less. 

And the beauty of falling water! It needs no 
eclectic to choose for us Nature's masterpiece. On 
Zambesi River you shall find it, where the Vic- 
toria Falls descend into the mist. Drenched by 
spray, I stood in the Rain Forest, over against 
the cataract. The waters, near a mile in length, 
were hurled thundering into space, my eyes failing 
to pierce the depths where they descended. A 
double rainbow hovered — ^hovers for ever — above 
the chasm, guarding by day as Pillar of Fire once 
guarded by night; and in this filament dwells 
'Nkulu 'Nkulu, Great Spirit of the Waters, re- 
ceiving from strong white men — agnostics — a 
worship denied to the hierarchy of Jehovah. 

Nature's second masterpiece is that view from 
the mountains behind Rio Janeiro; where earth 
and sea, mountains, lagoons, primseval forests, a 



A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 19 

dense tropic verdure, and a great city lie spread 
at one's feet. Rio Janeiro is the haven of the 
world. Not all the others may so much as touch 
the hem of her garment; not Stockholm, entered 
from the Baltic, not Naples, not Sydney, not 
Stamboul, nor Sitka, nor Galle, nor the Romsdal; 
she stands alone, unapproached. 

In a wooded park, outside the walls of Peking, 
rise the shrines of the Temple of Heaven, purely 
classic, the gem of all China. While we still 
lived in forests the Chinese had evolved the 
highest order of beauty, and ever since have dom- 
inated the Far East in art. From the temple of 
Confucius in Peking, to the least roof or arch or 
gateway in the Empire, the lines of Chinese art 
are austere, reserved, and yet the creations of an 
absolute perception. Japanese art and beauty is 
but a transplanted cutting of Chinese. The 
shrines at Nikko, where the dead Shoguns lie in 
the cryptomeria forest, are Chinese shrines; the 
small temples in Korea, in whose groves I have 
heard cuckoos calling in the spring, are Chinese 
temples. Even as far away as Siam, though bas- 
tardized by an effeminate people, Chinese artistic 
influence is supreme; Wat Prakeo, the royal tem- 
ple of Bangkok, is Chinese in every line. 

Nor have I told of Taj Mahal, in its garden 
by the Jumma — that one perfect shrine. Among 
the buildings of men there is nothing like this. 



20 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

The monuments of this very India — Mount Abu, 
Chitoor, Kutub Minar, Madura, Tanjore, the 
Mosque of Wazir in Lahore, and the Shwe Da- 
gon — these wonderful and romantic piles, cannot 
dim her glory, and if the shrine by Peking be 
named Heaven's Temple, the Taj is the very 
Vestibule of Paradise. 

To some of us, who have failed to find God 
among the theologians. Nature alone is left. In 
Nature we find the 'Termeating Essence" ; stand-^ 
ing before her greatest works, we see God Him- 
self. I enter no church; but I have worshipped 
in the Rain Forest, in the hills behind Rio, on 
the plaza of Arequipa, on Lake Lucerne in the 
early days of June, and in the cherry groves of 
Japan. I have worshipped at Cintra, by the 
Temple of Heaven, and before the Taj. I wor- 
shipped with the people of Samarkand in the 
mosque of Tila-Kar. They cried on Allah; my 
prayer went to the God who gave colour and that 
balmy autumn air, who gave the old Persians art 
and me perception. 

My parents' home lay at the base of the Eildon 
Hills, in the South of Scotland. Thence, when 
twelve years old, I was sent to a preparatory 
school in Worcestershire, a featureless youth, 
with red hair, above the average in sports, below 
it in scholarship, cutting no figure to speak of. I 



A SHOWMAN IX THE :\1AKIXG 21 

was very fond of music, and was invited, in my 
second term, to the supper of the school choir, 
held three times a year, where the authorities had 
set out an extremely good repast. I joined the 
choir next day. 

The headmaster, a peppery clerg}'man, hit me 
once in a fit of anger, so that I slipped and fell. 
Though not hurt, miy fall frightened him; help- 
ing me to rise, this contrite, bearded person of 
fifty kissed me — but on the whole mv school 
life was not unhappy. 

An overcharged nerv'ous system prohibited 
thoughts of a public school ; a generous father sent 
me to travel instead, and I started off in 1885 
for Australia, 

The ship was one of the Aberdeen wool clip- 
pers, a sailor, and cockleshell on the waters; after 
we had dropped the pilot off Plymouth, in a 
heavy sea, I retired below, with a foretaste of hell, 
and was seen no more of men for three weeks. 

It was a weary voyage; for seventy-five days 
we saw no land, and the thirty passengers, cooped 
physically and mentally, came to present an 
acute study in humanity. There was a nest under 
the bowsprit where a hoy might retire with a book, 
but for sedater people, aft, there could be but 
satiety and reaction. I had been put under the 
care of a young physician, retuming to Australia 
to practice, whose passage my father paid. Be- 



22 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

ginning on the brandy in my flask, a disappear- 
ance he explained as "evaporation," this individ- 
ual worked his way steadily through the ship's 
stock of liquor. Later, in Sydney, he lay three 
days unconscious; but in the end presented him- 
self to his family, and so passed out of my life. 

Long ere the voyage ended scandal and hatred 
were rife in the saloon, several of the ladies, in- 
deed, being beside themselves. Sniffs of contempt 
were heard at first, and nostrils curled in disdain ; 
one afternoon a hideous epithet was hurled, on 
another, a cup of cocoa — these, as between grown 
and well-nourished women. 

At times, in spite of my youth, I was drawn 
into the orbit of intrigue. I co-operated with a 
young Irishman on the first and only number of 
a ship's paper. It duly appeared; but there had 
been a written indiscretion: a man was knocked 
down on deck and a drunken brute put under 
arrest. That the indiscretion was mine, the pen- 
alty my colleague's, was beside the mark ; the cap- 
tain stopped the paper. The brute, released, 
vented himself on his wife, who spat full in his 
face, hissed the word "peacock!" clutched to her 
bosom a young family, and retired precipitately 
to her cabin. 

In the fulness of time the voyage ended, and 
I found myself in Australia. I was fourteen. My 
guardian lay in his bed in the Sydney Hotel, 



A SHOWMAN IN THE :MAKIXG 2S 

while I roved round the Chinese slums and sailed 
into ever}' cove in that wonderful harbour. Then 
I went South, to relatives in Melbourne, and from 
there to a big station far up in the ''bush." Mem- 
ory of this place is vivid. I recall the park-like 
scener}^, the immense gum-trees, and the great 
merino flocks in their 10,000-acre paddocks; rid- 
ing the boundaries, one discovered stretches of 
heath in fullest bloom and sheltered glades car- 
peted with maiden-hair; the flights of brilliant 
parrots were ceaseless, cockatoos screeched and 
circled in mid-air, and in the early mornings the 
exquisite notes of magpies were heard ; many was 
the opossum, too, I dragged from its lair up in 
the gums. Kangaroos swarmed here — consumers 
of good grass — and big hunts were organized. A 
five-mile gallop over the rough after an ''old man" 
beats fox-hunting; at bay, his back to a tree, I have 
seen a kangaroo rip three powerful dogs to pieces. 

At Ballarat I went down my first gold-mine, 
saw Sheet Anchor win the Melbourne Cup, crossed 
the straits and travelled in Tasmania, and after 
nine months at the Antipodes returned to Scot- 
land. 

In the autumn of that year, 1886, I went alone 
to South Africa, sailing in the "Drummond Cas- 
tle" — that doomed boat which in after-years 
foundered off the French coast, carr^dng to the 
bottom nearly all on board. 



24 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

A theatrical company for the Cape Town 
theatre travelled out, and on arrival there my 
evenings were spent ''behind." Leaning over the 
theatre bar one night was an out-of-work actor, 
to whom I was made known. His name was 
Booth, brother of the great American tragedian, 
and of that other who assassinated Abraham Lin- 
coln. 

Passengers for Natal transferred at Cape Town 
into the ''Melrose." On this steamer Carey, the 
Phoenix Park murderer and informer, had recently 
been shot, and the chief steward pointed with 
pride to the bullet mark in the woodwork of the 
saloon. His body had been carried ashore and 
buried at Port Elizabeth. 

Durban was a quiet little place in those days, 
in the grip of the Wesleyan Methodists. The 
prosperity that came with the Zulu and Boer wars 
had worn off, and the excitement over gold dis- 
coveries in the Transvaal had not yet reached 
the coast. I was staying with a dear old relative, 
who, to enliven his days, had undertaken some 
years before, in the columns of the local press, 
a fierce religious controversy with Bishop Colenso. 
The subject was St. Paul, against certain of 
whose doctrines the old gentleman held strong 
views. But the Bishop had died, and it was only 
at this time a new Pauline champion had come 
on the scene. This was, of all people, the chief 



A SHOWMAN IN THE ^L^KING 25 

customs officer of the port, an intimate friend of 
my cousin. Long letters were being printed 
daily from one or the other, and Paul's prestige 
seemed to wax and wane with each issue of the 
'"Advertiser." Once, being discovered in the cus- 
tom house, I was made to sit for over an hour 
behind some bales of wool, while the virtues of 
the seer were revealed to me in about thirty pages 
ot MS. ; but with whom victory finally lay I have 
forgotten. One night the customs officer came 
to play chess. Talking of the game, he said: 
''When I was in England I several times beat thci 
champion of South Shields.'' He then proposed 
a game with me. I disliked chess, was a wretched 
player, was nervous and overawed; but I sat down 
and won that game. Then I said, "Do you con- 
firm what you mentioned before, that you have 
several times beaten the champion of South 
Shields?'' He said, "Certainly," and I knew my 
chess career had reached its zenith. I have never 
played since. 

In those days the railway from Durban stopped 
at Ladysmith, transport thence to the interior 
being by ox-wagon. Hundreds of wagons were 
leaving Ladysmith with goods for the lately found 
Barberton goldfields, and on one of these, drawn 
by sixteen oxen, I went as passenger, the journey 
of less than 300 miles taking six weeks. We 
crossed the Biggarsberg, went through Newcastle, 



26 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

skirted the lower slopes of Majuba (''Mountain 
of Pigeons"), and passed over Laing's Nek. The 
story of the two battles, and all those graves on 
Mount Prospect, gave me furiously to think. By 
Christmas Day we had crossed the border and were 
trekking over the plains of the Transvaal. At 
Lake Chrissie a wild herd of 2,ooo blesboks gal- 
loped near us, a sight later years were never to wit- 
ness. 

A track was passed going off to the West. The 
transport rider said it led to a new goldfield called 
Witwatersrand, but thought it a poorish field, not 
to be compared with De Kaap. The name of the 
Sheba mine, near Barberton, was on all lips, and 
when we got to Komati River we heard the shares 
had risen to a hundred pounds. That same night 
the chief owner of the Sheba put up at the road- 
side shanty by the river; he, poor fellow, was on 
his way back to Maritzburg to drink himself to 
death. 

A coach took me from De Kaap back to Lady- 
smith; I had been only two days on the gold- 
fields, and didn't see the famous Sheba until seven 
years later. One day, on the desolate highveld, 
the coach stopped for the midday meal at a 
superior farm, by name Rolfontein, and I noticed 
there, out in the wilderness, a small observatory. 
It belonged to the farmer's nephew, John Ballot, 
a student and abstract thinker of high order, des- 



A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 27 

tined in after-years to become one of my dearest 
friends. 

I bought a horse and saddle on the market 
square of Maritzburg and rode north, a week's 
ride, through Greytown and the thorn country 
into Zululand. On the lonely Natal frontier, by 
the Tugela River, stood the ruins of the most 
famous building in South Africa — the store at 
Rorke's Drift. Twelve miles distant, over the 
Zulu border, lay the battlefield of Isandhlwana, 
("The Little Hand"), where Cetewayo's impi^ 
crescent shaped, had closed on our doomed men, 
and again one saw where British soldiers had 
passed through the bitterness of death. On the 
return ride, twenty miles out of Maritzburg, my 
horse began to foam at the nostrils, sure sign of 
the dreaded South African sickness, and in half 
an hour lay dead. I buried him where he lay. 

Returning to Scotland with nerves still awry, 
I passed two ineffective years, mainly at St. An- 
drews. Studying leisurely at the University, I 
played golf and football with young men destined 
for the Scottish ministry, who, though amongst 
the heaviest of whisky drinkers, were good com- 
pany. But I was restless, and penetrated in those 
days to Heligoland, Copenhagen, and as far as 
Stockholm. 

Then I was sent to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 
passing matriculation, but the authorities had to 



28 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

wink at a lack of Greek and other stock subjects 
of erudition. 

My knowledge, if not impressive, was bizarre. 
For instance, in my first year I became a high, 
perhaps the highest, undergraduate authority on 
Paley's "Evidences." Even students from other 
colleges were led into my rooms to study my 
mural cryptograms, for by mastery of these any 
one might face with assurance the approaching 
"Little Go.'' I have quite forgotten Paley. His 
arguments were no doubt based on unsound pre- 
mises, but my business at that time was to absorb 
his ideas, not to put forward my own. I only be- 
gan thinking about religious questions when 
twenty-four. 

In my second year, having served a term as 
secretary, I was elected president of the college 
debating society ; yet I cannot debate ; my extem- 
pore speeches, then and since, have always been 
rehearsed in bed. 

A college mission for the East of London was 
mooted at this time, and I was chosen, one of 
three, to visit the Metropolis and interview a 
certain suffragan bishop. What happened about 
the mission I don't recollect — but we had a deli- 
cious dinner. The Bishop narrated how once at 
early celebration, three notable converts — the 
principal Punch and Judy showman of London, 
with two associates — took the cup. Again at the 



A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 29 

midday service, to his amazement, he saw the 
three lining up. "We thought we couldn't have 
too much of a good thing, my lord," said the 
leader, as he again lifted the chalice. 

My rowing career at Trinity Hall, the rowing 
college, was a poor one. Weighing over thirteen 
stone, I was marked down as an ideal ''No. 5." 
In those days the Hall supplied a No. 5 to the 
'Varsity boat as a matter of course, and with any 
aptitude, I had no doubt been trained with this 
high objective in view. Fortunately, for I dis- 
liked rowing, a still more bulky Australian, with 
a rowing pedigree, showed such talent as to bring 
about my relegation. After much coaching, he 
came to rival his famous brother as an oar, and 
did actually row in the 'Varsity boat for several 
years. 

This year, '89, Trinity Hall went head of the 
river, and that winning night there was a "bump 
supper" such as Cambridge will not see again. 
Pleasantly excited on lemonade, I was one of 
perhaps five sober men in that big gathering. 
Supper over, the rallying-point of the evening 
was a huge bonfire in the quadrangle, fed with 
chairs, tables, curtains, clothes, spirits, and any- 
thing that would bum. The demand for fuel, 
indeed, nearly brought about a tragedy. Charles, 
assistant porter to the stately Thurlow, was 
caught and saturated with paraffin; eager hands 



30 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

were dragging him to the pyre, when he broke 
loose, and fled shrieking round the quadrangle, 
seeking an exit. I saved him. The wrath of the 
pursuers was diverted by one who rushed to me, 
crying, "Come on; there are Shadrach, Meshach 
and Abed-nego in the fiery furnace, and you know 
who you are.'' I turned, to see three maniacal 
figures standing in the flames, horribly contorting; 
these, too, were saved. Meanwhile, extraordinary 
sights were to be seen in ground-floor rooms. In 
one of these, all denuded for fuel as it was, a 
score of men were fighting, shouting, and drinking, 
while in one corner, oblivious of their surround- 
ings and stark naked, two sat quietly at a piano 
duet. A crashing of glass in the quadrangle now 
called for notice, and it was seen that every win- 
dow in one of the tutor's rooms had gone. He 
was a man who was not liked; he had a bitter 
tongue. It recked not that his father was to be- 
come in after-years a President of Wesleyan Con- 
ference, he, himself. Principal of another Uni- 
versity and a knight bachelor. In vino Veritas. 
So the empty bottles did their work, and twice a 
week, while that term lasted, those windows suf- 
fered a like fate. 

Before going to Cambridge I had decided on 
mining, an unusual profession in those days, yet 
one I had seen the value of in Australia and South 
Africa. Neither my father nor I knew in what 
the education of a mining engineer should coa- 



A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 31 

sist, nor of the existence of a School of Mines. 
The University authorities were approached as 
to a mining course, but it was soon evident they 
knew rather less about mining than I did; it was 
outside their ken. It ended in a scratch course 
in geology, chemistry, and hydrostatics; but of 
their practical bearing on mining I learned 
nothing, and left the University in complete ig- 
norance of the profession I hoped to enter. 

While at Cambridge I improved my scholarship 
not at all, but contact with so many men did me 
good. I had had the handling of money for a 
number of years, and understood, as the others 
could not, the bald facts of finance. I realized 
that, though only one of eleven children, I was 
spending several hundreds a year of my father's 
money, and wondered what my own exertions 
would ever represent. I knew the world, and 
didn't squander money at Cambridge; but there 
is inducement to do so, and you will find the 
University man, as a rule, a poor financier. 

More remembered by me are the long vacations 
of '89 and '90, spent in Southem Germany. I 
lived with two of the kindest old ladies, in the 
Neckarstrasse of Stuttgart, and entered fully into 
the life of the old town. In the mornings I 
studied music and the German language; after 
an early dinner I might have been seen drinking 
coffee under the Konigsbau, a little later taking 
tram for the baths at Kannstatt, or for a swim in 



S2 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

the Neckar itself, and walking home through the 
park. Some evenings I went with the ladies, 
who were abonniert^ to an opera at the Schloss 
Theatre, or to the concert in the Stadtgarten, and 
as often as not played billiards in the Residenz 
Cafe with a student of the Conservatoire, now 
a composer. When the handsome "Kaiserhof" 
was opened as a cafe, we honoured the event b)^ 
playing billiards till seven in the morning, and 
about eight-thirty I shocked my lady teacher of 
German by falling asleep. 

On Sundays, escorted by me, the ladies took 
dinner at the home of a sister, the widow of a 
famous piano-maker. Twice a week, once by us, 
once at the house of some other member of the 
circle, delicacies were set out, and six old ladies 
and myself played whist from four till seven. I 
have reason to believe the youngest was sixty- 
three, but though unskilled they all played with 
a zest. Playing pfennig points, I often won as 
much as a mark at these sittings, but always 
strove, by the assiduous handing of cakes and such 
like, that this fact should not rankle. 

The second summer, I spent some time in Ba- 
varia, and Munich became to me, as it has re- 
mained, one of the cities of the world. The mad 
King was then not long dead — a suicide. Stand- 
ing by the Stamberg Lake, I saw in my mind the 
scene, and located, as it were, the very spot where 
the faithful physician, hastening to his succour, 



A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 33 

had been pulled under. Poor King! and not so 
mad after all. Did he not befriend and finance 
Richard Wagner, when saner people would have 
none of him? He had an eye for beauty, too. 
Such palaces as Chiemsee, Linderhof, and Neusch- 
wanstein may have drained the exchequer, but 
they are beautiful to look on. 

Reaching the village of Oberammergau, in the 
Bavarian Tyrol, I dwelt at the house of Caiaphas, 
the High Priest. This one year, in ten, the 
villagers were performing their Passion Play, and 
to my host had been allotted this not unimportant 
part. On a Sunday, from eight till four, in the 
open air, the scenes of the play were unfolded — 
a reverent and a wonderful performance. In my 
attic room in this village lay a litter of old papers, 
among them many in the hand of the good Abbe 
Deisenberger, to whom, long ago, Oberammergau 
owed the inception of the great idea. Perchance 
he, too, had slept under these old eaves. 

I returned to Stuttgart for a while, to the quiet 
life in the Neckarstrasse, to the bathing and the 
whist parties, but a pending event was beginning 
to excite me ; then came a night in the train, a day 
and a night in Niimberg, and I was at Bayreuth. 
Early that afternoon I stood outside the theatre 
in the forest — gift of the mad King to Wagner — 
waiting in a state of nervous exaltation. At half- 
past three the trombones were blown. At four 
the last sounds from the great audience died 



84 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

away, and as we sat in the darkness, the first 
notes of "Parsifal" were heard. This was the 
most stirring moment there had yet been in my 
life. The prelude ended. As in a dream one saw 
the mediaeval forest, the passing on his litter of 
the stricken Amfortas, the wild swan fall, dying, 
by the lake, the sacred feast in the hall of the 
knights ; as in a dream one passed through it all, 
till that final moment when the voice of Titurel 
is heard from his coffin, and the grail glows with 
increasing lustre. If the mountains of Gothic 
Spain ever had a dweller, it was I, during those 
throbbing hours. 

I couldn't really understand the music of 'Tar- 
sifal," but could feel its depth, could see the gran- 
deur of the story — itself flowing from the 
composer's brain — and know that here was a work 
of transcendent genius. For days scenes kept 
passing before my eyes; in my ears sounded the 
Gral tnotiv^ and those strange orchestral effects. 
The world seemed to have opened out; 'Tarsifal" 
was a true climax to my German period. 

Then suddenly the course of things changed. 
My father had invested in Transvaal mines, and 
wished me there, to see things for myself. A 
milestone had been reached. Cambridge and 
Stuttgart knew me no more, and at short notice 
I set out again for South Africa. 



CHAPTER II 

IN SOUTH AFRICA 

Early in 1891 I landed a second time in Natal. 
Things were stirring in South Africa. Rhodes, 
the Colossus, had taken over the premiership of 
the Cape. The Kimberley diamond mines had 
become one, in De Beers. The year before, 
guided by Selous, the pioneers had entered Mash- 
onaland, and Fort Salisbury was a town; tales 
of rich mines up there were coming through. And 
there was Johannesburg! That transport rider 
on the Barberton road was no prophet; the Wit- 
watersrand had become the most important gold- 
field in the world, a great future was opening for 
it, and from Cape Town to Lourengo Marques the 
seaports were building competing lines to this 
objective. 

This was no loafer's atmosphere. I made at 
once for the goldfields, and a few weeks later saw 
me at work on the Nigel, a mine lying by itself 
on the rolling veld, thirty miles from Johannes- 
burg, where I stayed a year, working in mine, mill, 
and office, and absorbing, although slowly, the 
principles of sound mining. 

35 



36 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

The Nigel ore, at that time, was the richest in 
the Transvaal. For days together 5-oz. rock 
would be going through the 20-stamp mill, and 
amalgam lay on the copper plates like Devon- 
shire cream. Once, after my night shift, when the 
mill manager had scraped the plates, he said, 
''You could have taken 800 oz. last night, and 
I shouldn't have known." ^ The Kaffirs working 
in the mill were trusted, the plates being fully 
exposed, but I don't think amalgam stealing was 
then one of their vices; it came later, of course. 
I may say now, to my shame, that when on night 
shift, and overcharged with cocoa, I several times 
slept in the mill towards that fatal 3.30 a.m., and 
woke to find screens broken and chaos on the 
plates. A man is dismissed for less in these days. 

The mine lay alone on the veld, nine miles 
from the small town of Heidelberg. Visitors 
from the Rand came now and then to look round 
the district, but we were an isolated little com- 
munity. We were self-contained ; there was some 
shooting, good tennis, and frequent musical even- 
ings; we had enough talent, too, for theatricals, 
and put an abridged version of 'The Mikado" 
into rehearsal, with myself as the ruler of Japan. 
Just then, one of the engine-drivers, a valued 
member of the chorus, got three fingers crushed to 
pieces, and my friend Dr. Nixon came from 

* About £1,200. 



IN SOUTH AFRICA 37 

Heidelberg to operate. I assisted. He gave 
chloroform, but the man's heart was weak, and 
he had to be shaken back to consciousness. In a 
drowsy, sodden voice he said to me, "Sing the 
Mikado's song," and Nixon, hearing, took up the 
scissors. Holding with both hands the poor 
wretch's head, I sang out : — 

"A more humane Mikado never did in Japan exist," 

and in place of that staccato chord which follows, 
the scissors snapped, and a finger fell off, There 
was a shriek of agony, and writhing, and the bind- 
ing up of the stump. Then I went on : 

"To nobody second, I'm certainly reckoned a true philanthropist. " 

Again comes that staccato chord, and again, in 
perfect tempo^ a finger dropped. After more 
shrieks and more sewing up, I sang on, and at the 
words 

"A source of innocent merriment," 

the third and last finger disappeared. The opera- 
tion was over; Nixon had added to his surgical 
laurels, while I went out on the veld and was 
violently sick. 

On the night we plaj^ed "The Mikado" there 
was nearly a tragedy. The house was crowded. 
A variety entertainment, forming the first part of 
the show, was in progress, when some one rushed 
into the dressing-room crying to us that Day's 



38 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

house was on fire. Day was the Koko of the 
evening, his wife the operatic pianist. In a mo- 
ment Koko, pianist, a male Katisha, several in 
variety costume, and a Japanese chorus, were tear- 
ing over the veld. Beside them, strangely 
decollete in the moonlight, rushed an immense 
ballet-dancer. We were just in time; the fire was 
within a foot of the bed where two babies lay 
asleep. It was soon put out. The house was 
slightly damaged, whilst amongst the rescue 
party, I, in ballet costume aforesaid, had burst 
my stays. These repaired, we rushed back to the 
hall and continued the programme without a stop, 
scoring a success. 

From the Nigel, a period I look back on as 
one of the happiest, I went to Johannesburg, 
which became my headquarters for the next six 
years. I worked at first in the City and Suburban 
and Ferreira mines. Later, through friendly of- 
fices, I became director and managing director of 
several gold and coal properties, and gave much 
of my time to their affairs. In these years I 
travelled a great deal, inspecting and reporting, 
and at one time or another saw nearly every mine 
in South Africa. Besides the Rand, with its forty 
miles of mines, I got to know what was worth 
knowing of Heidelberg, Klerksdorp, De Kaap, 
Lydenburg, the Low Country, and the coal meas- 
ures; and outside the Transvaal travelled in 



IN SOUTH AFRICA 39 

Natal, Zululand, the Free State, Cape Colony, 
Bechuanaland, Matabeleland, Mashonaland, Mo- 
zambique, Madagascar, Reunion, and Mauritius. 

It seems to me no one ever soaked himself in 
the charm of South Africa as I did in those years. 
Perhaps its charm lay subjectively, in me, for I 
find myself unable to analyse it. South Africa 
is not a scenic country, but there are beautiful 
spots, the grandest effects of sunrise and sunset, 
a clear, clear atmosphere, which lends itself to 
illusion — and memories. From the very harbour 
of Cape Town, where you first land, there is a 
view! At sunset, look over to the Blaauwberg 
Range. Its dying outline, seen through that at- 
mosphere, is one of the loveliest things in nature. 
Then walk under the avenue of oak-trees behind 
Parliament House, thinking of the old Dutch 
days. Go out behind Table Mountain, and see 
the oaks and the vineyards of Constantia. Gaze 
through the trees at Hottentots' Holland, and 
again take a long look at the Blaauwberg. Every- 
where there is charm. The very Karroo is trans- 
figured by the sunrise. In September, ride out to 
the Boer farms; in that month the green young 
willow leaves and the pink peach blossoms are 
seen together, and the ugly little farmhouses are 
forgotten. 

Then there are the natives. My memories of 
South Africa are full of them. All the races in- 



40 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

terest me, but the Zulus I love. They are a race 
of gentlemen ; they are, physically, the aristocrats 
of humanity. 

Before my mind's eye passes a panorama of the 
kloofs and dense bush of Natal and Zululand. 
I see myself a boy again (Mikwazintlelen, they 
called me), riding into a kraal to exchange col- 
oured beads for assegais, or bartering by the road- 
side for a warrior's plume of the sakabula. Then 
I can hear, towards evening, Zulus calling from 
hill to hill, with that long rest of theirs on the 
penultimate, and a Kaffir postman runs past, sing- 
ing, into the night. Once, as I walked down Pil- 
grim's Creek, Swazies were on the hills above, 
crying long messages to each other. Their voices 
reached me faintly; they seemed to mingle with 
the notes of birds, then died away. And once 
there was a Hottentot shelling mealies, who sat 
in the hot sun looking out over the plain. Why, 
I know not, but there was that in the picture 
which seemed to symbolize Hottentotdom ; it is 
stamped for ever on my brain. 

In 1894, with my friend Henry Wiltshire, I 
made a memorable journey through the Eastern 
Transvaal, the Low Country, and Delagoa Bay. 
In those days Lourengo Marques was a primitive 
place, with a deadly climate, and just then it was 
the tail end of a bad fever season; people had 
been dying like flies, and the overworked sepul- 



IN SOUTH AFRICA 41 

ture department collapsed. In the height of the 
fever, coffins were simply not to be had. A "prop- 
erty" coffin, fitted with a false bottom, was being 
used, and the corpse dumped through into a thing 
called a grave, but rather less than two feet deep. 
After a heavy rainstorm, this earth covering was 
mostly washed away, and large patches of corpse 
could be seen, calling aloud for re-interment. 

Another death-trap was Komanti Poort. From 
this point the Selati Railway was being built, to 
so-called gold-mines in the Murchison Range. It 
was alleged that the Selati concessionaires had 
bribed most of Kruger's Volksraad, a trap and 
horses, in individual cases, being mentioned as 
quid pro quo. The Poort was a great game cen- 
tre. The rivers swarmed with hippo, and the 
bush with lions; travelling to railhead, on the 
contractor's engine, we saw tens of thousands of 
koodoo and impala. The line itself was a white 
elephant, and was abandoned some months later. 
From Komanti Poort we went to the De Kaap 
fields, already but a shadow of the fields of '87, 
and at last I saw the famous Sheba. From Bar- 
berton we rode over the Kantoor and Spitzkop to 
Pilgrim's Rest and Lydenburg; we walked all one 
night down the Ohrigstad Valley, swam the Croco- 
dile River unscathed, and striking out through the 
Low Country, duly reached Leysdorp. 

After inspecting the small mines of this field. 



42 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

we again struck across country for Klein Letaba. 
Some days later, weary and footsore, we walked 
into the store at the Birthday mine, and sat down 
to corned beef that stank and weevily bread that 
was uneatable, and I stood up and cursed the 
little Jew proprietor in rounded periods. Seven 
years later, in Dawson City, Klondike, I went 
into a small goldsmith's shanty to buy nuggets, 
and behind the counter stood that little trader. 
But my curse held; he was not thriving in the 
bleak North. 

In 1893 I had to do with some mines at Klerks- 
dorp, staying there with my friend, E. J. Way, 
then manager of the Eastleigh. His house, lying 
on a lonely stretch of veld near the Vaal River, 
had been built by an earlier manager — the notori- 
ous Deeming. This was the man who murdered 
his wives and children, burying the bodies under 
fireplaces, which he cemented over. He was 
caught — I think in Liverpool — extradited to Mel- 
bourne, and there hanged. 

I slept in the room that was his. One night, 
about two, I awoke trembling. Close by my bed, 
in the clear moonlight, stood a shrouded white 
figure. I got up and moved towards it; but it re- 
ceded, and at a spot by the wall seemed to sink 
through the floor and vanish. I went slowly to 
the spot and looked down. It was a cemented fire- 
place. Shall we say that a stray moonbeam woke 



IN SOUTH AFRICA 43 

me, and mixed with my unadjusted faculties? — 
for I am no believer in the occult. The incident 
is offered, without prejudice, to the Psychical Re- 
search Society; the lonely house on the veld is still 
there, the cement undisturbed since Deeming laid 
it. At St. Moritz, on a Christmas Day fifteen 
years later, I told this. Among those who lis- 
tened was one who made entry in a note-book. 
"That mine and house belong to me now," he 
said; 'Til have the cement up some day.'' 

An early financial venture of mine in Johannes- 
burg was the purchase of two Cape carts and six 
horses, which were leased to a Malay from Cape 
Town for £12 a week. WTien I said to one of 
my friends, a very wealthy man, '1 hope you 
won't cut me now — I'm running two cabs," he 
answered, ''Be easy, I, once owned a shooting gal- 
lery." These cabs returned 50 per cent, for the 
first six months ; but after that, wear and tear, and 
the loss of a horse or two, ran away with most of 
the rent. Then the Malay, seeking a state of holi- 
ness rare among cabbies, departed for Mecca, and 
died there, and I sold out. 

After days spent underground, or roaming 
along the reef, I often went to the theatre. A 
frequent companion there was the theatrical writer 
for the ''Star," whose work I did at one time, 
adding dramatic critic to my professions of gold- 
miner and cab-owner. 



44 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

The best acting I remember to have seen in 
my life I saw in Johannesburg. That was in 
'Torget-me-not," played by Genevieve Ward and 
the late W. H. Vernon. I don't expect again to 
hear anything so fine as the verbal duel in the 
second act. And what a scene that towards the 
end! Stephanie, the traitress, in terror of her 
life, is hiding in the hotel in Rome, where Sir 
Horace visits her. As they talk, the sound of a 
chant is borne in from the street. Sir Horace 
watching her, says slowly, "That is the Miserere 
of the barefooted Carmelites, whose duty it is to 
carry to the grave the bodies of those found as- 
sassinated in the streets of Rome." Stephanie 
raises her ashen face, to see, looking in at the 
window — the avenger. 

It was melodrama, but superb: when are the 
Colonies to see the like again? Theatrical ven- 
tures, like many other things on the fields, were 
largely in Jewish hands. Especially was the 
''Empire" Jewish, and the performers therein. 
One night, visiting this music-hall with a club 
acquaintance, we made friends after the perform- 
ance with one of the company, a young Jewish 
lady from Whitechapel, and repaired to Mrs. 
Joel's cafe for supper. Mrs. Joel, herself a Jew- 
ess, was reputed full aunt to Barney Bamato, the 
millionaire speculator, who, some time before, 
had jumped overboard from the ''Scot." For 



IN SOUTH AFRICA 45 

years the ''Scot" was the crack boat on the South 
African run, but Barney's suicide was also her 
deathblow. From that time no Jew travelled on 
her; although so fine a ship she fell upon financial 
trouble, was sold cheap, and now, under another 
name, carries tourists from New York to Ber- 
muda. We ushered the young woman into Mrs. 
Joel's private supper-room. There, refusing all 
offers of a more varied diet, this inferior artiste 
sat on my friend's knee and ate pickled gherkins 
till the atmosphere reeled round us. It was the 
apotheosis of cucumber. During the eating she 
entertained us with homely facts of her life, en- 
tering w^ith some detail into her stomachic troubles. 
When we could, we fled, but since that night my 
supper guests have been chosen with more dis- 
crimination. 

At one time there was a talk of a new morning 
paper for the Rand, and I was asked to suggest 
a name. I said, ''Call it the 'Main Reef 
Leader' "^ (subdued laughter) ; then added, 
"And let its aim be sound mining rather than un- 
sound politics." Though the scheme fell through 
I was dead right about the policy. The Rand's 
business was mining, not politics. The mines were 
run extravagantly. To put these on an economic 
basis, and to do their duty by the shareholders, 
was quite enough work for those in control. In- 

*The name of one of the gold reefs. 



46 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

stead of doing this, those people put their brains 
and energy into abortive political agitation; and 
mining reforms, which should have been initiated 
between 1893 and 1897, were actually not put in 
force till ten years later. 

The Rand capitalists ought to have let politics 
alone. If they felt they had grievances, there 
was a man like the late W. Y. Campbell, a big 
red-bearded Scotsman, the best the Rand ever 
knew, to whom their case might have been 
handed. In his fingers the threads of Uitlander 
agitation should have centred. Some well- 
equipped mediator of this sort might have done 
something with the Pretoria Government; the 
course adopted, that of browbeating, was certain 
of failure. But the capitalists had no grievances. 
The mining law of the Transvaal favoured them 
more than did that of any English Colony, there 
was no direct taxation, three railways were built 
to Johannesburg from the coast; finally, from 
1894 onwards, the public in Europe bought scrip 
almost as fast as it could be printed. The 
capitalists wallowed in money. Nor had the rank 
and file of the Uitlanders grievances. There was 
employment for all who would work. Salaries 
were enormous; white miners got over-£i a day, 
for a poor day's work, and all other pay was in 
proportion. 

We were told in the columns of the capitalist 



IN SOUTH AFRICA 47 

press, or by speakers from the platforms of the 
National Union, that the Boer Government was 
corrupt, that Kruger had gone back on his 
promise to give us the franchise, that the sight 
of thousands of Britons without a vote was de- 
grading. All true, no doubt. But what really 
concerned those thousands of Britons, at that time, 
was the state of the share market; so long as that 
was booming, their political aspirations were 
dead. What on earth did I, for example, want 
with a vote? My only direct tax was a poll tax 
of £l a year. I was earning good money, supple- 
mented by occasional share deals. I was perfectly 
content. What if the Boer Government loas 
corrupt? Did I not see corruption in Johannes- 
burg, among people who declared themselves more 
civilized than the Boers? And as to a vote — 
well, if that entailed taking the oath of allegiance 
to the Transvaal, ceasing to be a British subject, 
I saw no possible reason for such step. 

That insoluble question of the suzerainty was 
the root of the trouble. People argued, Britain 
being suzerain over the Transvaal, that British 
subjects were entitled to the Transvaal franchise, 
while retaining full British status. On the other 
hand. President Kruger, I think with better rea- 
son, argued: 'Tf these people, who in a year or 
two will outnumber us, are to have the vote, and 
if they remain British in sentiment, their first 



48 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

action will be to vote the Transvaal into a British 
Colony. This doesn't strike me as likely to benefit 
us Boers ; I shall keep them from voting as long as 
I have the power." 

It was no use appealing to the wording of the 
document which defined the suzerainty. This was 
vague, and had made no provision for so unfore- 
seen a position. Each side could only put its own' 
interpretation, but, as I have said, I thought the 
President's the more logical. 

''Briton or Boer!" When I first went to the 
Transvaal, racial feeling was dying out. For 
ends that were mainly selfish, the capitalists re- 
vived it, and their newspapers fed the fliames for 
years. Jameson completed the schism — although, 
be it remembered, against the instructions of the 
Rand leaders — when he crossed the border with 
his police. After the Raid, war was probably un- 
avoidable; to that extent I absolve the British 
party. But the beginning of the agitation (ex- 
cepting that of a few enthusiasts of the Fitzpat- 
rick type) was discreditable to us. ^ 

I had no great Fespect for Paul Kruger. Some 
of his acts didn't seem to square with his pro- 
fessions of religion, which, outwardly, were very 
marked. I had to see him once, arriving at his 
house, by appointment, at 5.30 in the morning, 
while it was yet dark. Passing two policemen 
on the stoep, I entered the sitting-room, and found 



IN SOUTH AFRICA 49 

the family at devotions. Some one was playing a 
harmonium, and heavy, tuneless voices were dron- 
ing out a psalm. We knelt, while the President 
read long prayers; after which the little servant 
girl handed round coffee, and the work of the day 
commenced. 

I am not prepared to say that Kruger was in- 
sincere; it is rather an expression of opinion. His 
government, and many of his agents were cor- 
rupt; but the man is dead, and I would rather 
think well of him. He was a great man and a 
true patriot. 

I first saw Cecil Rhodes in 1894. He rarely 
came to the Transvaal. One night, however, he 
dined at the Rand Club, and for half an hour I 
never took my eyes off his face, repeating to my- 
self, over and over again: ''That's the profile of 
Julius Csesar." He had a face of extraordinary 
power, and the immense nose so often found in 
men of that type. 

Some years later, before leaving London to 
report on Rhodesia for a small syndicate of which 
he was a member, I called on Rhodes at the Bur- 
lington Hotel. A big map of Africa lay on the; 
table; as he discussed some of his schemes, he 
ruled it off in pencil lines, casually, as one of 
lesser calibre laying out a garden. 

The last time I^saw him was at Groot Schuur, 
a few weeks before the war. I remembered him 



so ^THE SHADOW-SHOW 

saying, In that falsetto he rose to when excited, 
*'Oom Paul won't fight. He'll back down." 
After lunch we sat outside and listened to the 
band of some up-country mission station, come 
to earn his approval ; but I doubt if he knew one 
note from another. Even after death the Colus- 
sus was not to follow in the ways of lesser men. 
As the train, bearing his remains, rushed north 
to the Matoppo Hills, the shell burst open. His 
great spirit was passing uneasily to its rest. 

During these years, drawn there as by a mag- 
net, I often found myself back in Natal, where, 
for the time being, the more strenuous life of the 
Transvaal was forgotten. 

Natal is a country with a small white popula- 
tion of farmers, while for every white there are 
ten natives, of Zulu extraction. In the Zulu War 
of 1879 these natives mostly remained loyal, and 
in the old days many were glad to place their 
kraals on the farms and to work for about 8s. a 
month. The children often became house ser- 
vants, and between the natives and the whites, all 
of whom spoke Zulu fluently, was much good 
feeling. In more recent years, owing to the Trans- 
vaal's demand for labour, wages have risen to 
three or four times the old figure, while the qual- 
ity of service is not what it was. Many of the 
younger men come back dissatisfied from the 
Rand, where they have received big wages, ac- 



IN SOUTH AFRICA 51 

quired dissolute habits, and learned to think and 
speak disrespectfully of the whites. More and 
more, too, the natives are coming in contact with 
the mission stations. A mission-station KafRr is 
no use to any one, for he has acquired the vices 
of the white man without his virtues. In return 
for a smattering of education and Christianity, he 
is liable to become conceited, insolent, and se- 
cretly disloyal. He has leamed that all men are 
equal in the sight of God, without the useful 
corollary that they are not equal in the sight of 
men and that the world conforms to the lat- 
ter usage. Missionaries, both white and black, 
liquor-sellers, and all men who lower in the native 
mind the respect due to the dominant race, may 
be laying up for us a future store of trouble in 
Africa. 

Natal is a fertile country, with a beautiful 
climate, yet there are great drawbacks to agri- 
culture. Droughts or locusts can ruin a crop, 
and animals are susceptible to strange diseases. 
I have seen my friends lose their horses, cattle, 
and poultry more than once. But the balance 
remains on the right side. Life is easy there, the 
farmer's condition is comfortable, if not affluent, 
and the colonists get more pleasure out of life 
than most; a Natal country tennis party in the 
old days, followed by supper and a dance, con- 



52 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

tinued often for a second day, was as good amuse- 
ment as I remember. 

Passing to and fro through Pietermaritzburg, 

1 used to put up at the Horse Shoe Hotel, where 
there was a first-rate billiard-room. One day, 
noticing a new marker, I asked him to play, and 
he flattened me out badly. I said, "You play a 
fairish game. What's your name?" "It's Stev- 
enson.'' Since then he has stood in the great 
Roberts's shoes as world's champion of English 
billiards. Talking of Roberts, he one night gave 
an exhibition at the Rand Club, and when it was 
over, stayed on with me alone talking. About 

2 a.m., Roberts said, 'Til show you a shot no 
one else in the world can do." It was a cannon 
off either nine or eleven cushions, and required 
a terrific hit. He did it. Then I took the cue, 
gave a tremendous smash, and — achieved ! I put 
my hand familiarly on his shoulder, saying, "Rob- 
erts, you and I are the only people in the world 
who can do that shot." It broke him up alto- 
gether. I don't know If he wept, but I must 
have helped him to his cab. John Roberts in his 
prime was wonderful; his stately presence and 
finely fitting clothes, added to his iron nerve, and 
his then unique knowledge of billiards, was a 
combination worth going far to see. 

Natal is a country neither rich nor important, 
but has for me an extraordinary charm. A win- 



IN SOUTH AFRICA 53 

ter evening on the uplands, the sun low on the 
horizon, a slight chill in the air, as of the coming 
night, a patch of rich bush not far distant, a native 
kraal, from which the smoke rises lazily, a KafRr 
maiden perched high above the mabele to frighten 
birds from the ripening grain, and, borne on the 
clear air, the plaintive song of the natives bring- 
ing home their cattle — such a picture is among my 
treasured memories. 

In the heart of Natal, just off the Grey town 
road, there is an old farmhouse, where at different 
times have been spent the happiest days of my 
life. The giant gum-trees which surround it were 
planted more than fifty years ago by one of the 
earliest colonists. This charming old man. Dr. 
Charles Bird Boast, was the first of my friends to 
die. In dying he faced, as a thinker, a deep, 
unknown sea, yet when he knew, as a physician, 
that his hour was come, he called his family round 
his bed and passed out conscious and smiling, and 
I was proud of my old friend's manner of death. 
He went in 1897; but the little brook still mur- 
murs under the gum-trees and the doves are coo- 
ing in the branches. When the longing for Africa 
comes on me I leave the utmost ends of the earth 
for that old farmhouse on the Greytown road. 

Towards the end of 1894, when I reached the 
Rand from the Low Country, the great ''boom" 
was just beginning. It lasted a year, and has 



54 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

become historic. Before its height, on a realized 
profit of modest dimensions, I visited Europe. 
How well I remember, typifying this boom year, 
that big crowd on the steps of the Paris Bourse. 
Above the roar, stentorian voices shouted, "Mos- 
samedes ! Mossamedes, a soixante quinze !" Here 
were shares of a district a thousand miles from 
the Rand, where no gold existed, and I knew then 
that the French investor was doomed. If he, why 
not others? That night, I wrote to a friend on 
the Rand, "Sell everything you hold. The world 
is gone mad." When my letter arrived, he told 
me afterwards, he could have turned the scale at 
£60,000. He hesitated, and was lost. Next year 
he cleared out with only £17,000. 

When I got back, in October, '95, the "boom" 
was breaking. Johannesburg was still rolling in 
money, and people were intoxicated with success; 
but there was an undercurrent of uneasiness about, 
and the share market was nervous. Clearly some- 
thing was in the wind. 



CHAPTER III 



THE tortoise's HEAD 



On an evening in early December, I sat at 
dinner in the Rand Club. I was alone, at my 
favourite comer table; sipping a chocolate ice, I 
mused pleasantly over my affairs. 

One of my friends came in and sat by me. He 
said, 'Tm going to tell you something, and you 
must swear to keep it secret." 

^^Oh, all right.'' 

''Well, there's going to be a revolution in a 
few weeks. I don't know all the details; but it's 
to get us the franchise. Rhodes is behind it, and 
Jameson will come in with the Chartered police 
to put it down. But the first thing is to capture 
the arsenal at Pretoria. They're getting five hun- 
dred picked men to volunteer for this; I've joined, 
and they asked me to get you. Of course, it'll be 
dangerous work." 

I seemed to swallow something. I heard my 
voice saying, ''Oh yes, I'll join," and I ordered 
another ice. Promising to give details as they 
came to him, my friend went off. 

I sat on quietly. But how hot it was ! ... To 

55 



56 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

take the arsenal ! Why, the place simply bristled 
— Of course^ if II he dangerous work! In a flash 
I realized that I wanted no vote, that it was 
shameful to rob the Boers of their country. 

But there I was — ^pledged. One of five hun- 
dred picked men ! Passionate lover of peace as I 
then knew myself, I could do nothing. Then I 
thought of my shares that were being carried on 
the London market. I went back to my rooms 
and put my selling orders into code. 

For the last few years of his life Cecil Rhodes 
was the biggest man in the world, as I believe 
Porfirio Diaz of Mexico to have been for some 
years after Rhodes's death. He had not the great- 
est intellect; but a strong brain, a fixed purpose, 
a gigantic personality, unrivalled achievement, 
and immense prestige set him on the pinnacle. 
He was Premier of the Cape, Life Governor of 
De Beers, and Dictator of Rhodesia — a great 
stretch of territory he had added to the Empire. 
He was a millionaire by his holdings in the dia- 
mond and gold mines. In the latter his power 
was not openly exercised; but, from the capital- 
ists downward, he was looked up to by all as the 
leader. He was the uncrowned king of South 
Africa. 

Rhodes's greatest scheme, unification of South 
Africa under the British flag, still remained to 



THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 57 

accomplish. But he suffered from a weak heart; 
he knew his years were numbered, and tried to 
force things which could not be forced. 

As a lever in his scheme, he seized on the 
political agitation in the Transvaal. The large 
English community there was demanding the 
franchise. But as these people promised soon to 
outnumber the Boers, and made no secret of their 
British sympathies, and as the wording of the 
suzerainty document was vague, one can at least 
understand President Kruger's action in refus- 
ing it. 

Towards the end of 189,5 ^^ Uitlander leaders 
planned a revolution. They worked in collusion 
with Rhodes; his brother joined their inner com- 
mittee, his money and influence were behind 
them. 

The scheme as outlined was this: On a given 
day five hundred picked men would seize the 
arsenal at Pretoria, capture the President and 
his advisers, and paralyse the Government. Si- 
multaneously the English along the Rand would 
rise and proclaim a revolution. The Adminis- 
trator of Rhodesia, Dr. Jameson, would be sta- 
tioned on the frontier with the Chartered com- 
pany's regiment of police, and being appealed to 
by the Uitlanders, would come in to establish 
law and order. A formal letter was drafted and 



58 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

sent him, and it remained only to fix the day. 
No one seemed to anticipate failure. 

Beyond this stage the plans of the inner circle 
were not clear. Some were for annexing the 
country to the Empire, others declared in favour 
of retaining the Republic and its flag. There 
was a deadlock. On Christmas morning, as I 
went into the club, Charles Leonard and F. H. 
Hamilton came out and drove to Park Station. 
They were leaving for Cape Town, to lay the 
flag question before Rhodes. 

That some member, or members, of the British 
Government knew unofficially of the plot, I be- 
lieve; but that Rhodes told the High Commis- 
sioner what was going on is unlikely — if he did, 
he garbled the facts. It is also doubtful if 
Rhodes was sincere toward the inner circle. It 
is said that he assured them the British Govern- 
ment knew, and would act in sympathy when 
the time came. Either Rhodes lied, or they, as 
we were told the High Commissioner would at 
once come up and recognize the revolution, and 
a member of the inner circle swore to me that, 
so far as he knew, the British Government was 
going to help us. As to the ethics of such action 
on England's part, or its inherent probability, we 
didn't bother our heads. Rhodes was all-power- 
ful; if he said the thing would be, it would be. 

To me it mattered not who was, or was not, 



THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 59 

behind the plot. A small pawn in the game, I 
was in because my club friends were in. I had 
no politics. I wanted no franchise. I failed to 
see why any Britisher did. What really worried 
me was the taking of that arsenal ! 

As December waned, the excitement in Johan- 
nesburg became intense. We knew Jameson and 
his police were waiting, encamped on the border, 
and we expected hourly to hear that the day had 
been fixed. But the Boers were getting suspicious. 
Too many people were in the secret. The Presi- 
dent got to know something; in a speech at Mid- 
delburg he compared the Uitlander agitation with 
the tortoise — which is only scotched when it puts 
out its head. 

The next we heard was that, Pretoria being on 
the alert, it had been decided to drop the attempt 
on the arsenal, and some of us took the disap- 
pointment wonderfully well. Then, at Christ- 
mas, the trouble over the flag question leaked 
out. 

Immediately the discovery followed that 
enough guns and ammunition could not be got 
through in time. This altered everything, and 
the rising was postponed for three weeks; but 
that there had been postponement was known 
only to the leaders. 

The guns were coming through from Kimber- 
ley, hidden in trucks of coke. Only 2,300 Lee- 



60 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

Metfords, three Maxims, and a small quantity of 
ammunition had arrived, and that was all that 
ever got in. 

And then, just at the end of the year, as tension 
was relaxing, a rumour spread like wild-fire. 
Jameson had crossed the border ! He had cut the 
wires; he had taken the bit in his teeth, and was 
galloping to the Rand ! 

When postponement was decided on, three 
messengers were sent to Jameson post-haste. One 
went round 'by De Aar, another rode direct to 
Mafeking, and the third by a route I have for- 
gotten — ^possibly through Lichtenburg. One, at 
least, of these reached him, to receive in reply the 
words, 'They may send me fifty messen- 
gers, but Pm coming/' 

In those days, with a little luck, I might have 
perhaps changed the face of history. A week 
before Jameson started, there went to Mafeking 
at my expense an ex-officer of the British Army, 
with instructions to report on the position. He 
carried a private code, dealing ostensibly with 
mining affairs. Duly reaching Mafeking, he rode 
out to Jameson's camp at Pitsani, spent the whole 
of that Sunday there, and returned to Mafeking 
at sundown. 

But where was his prescience? Where his mili- 
tary instinct? Within an hour of his leaving to 



THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 61 

return to Mafeking the whole of Jameson's regi- 
ment had broken camp and crossed the border. 
Next morning I got a wire which, de-coded, read : 
"Jameson is here with seven hundred men and 
eight Maxims. He will not move for a few 
days." As a matter of fact, he had less than five 
hundred men, and had moved the night before! 
If any man had grasped the position that Sun- 
day, and had actually seen the start, how differ- 
ent might things have been. I got his wire at 
eleven on Monday morning. Had this described 
the true state of things I should at once have 
handed it to the inner circle, who had no infor- 
mation till five in the evening. With that six 
hours in hand, and a peremptory message sent out 
to Jameson from Rhodes and the High Commis- 
sioner, it is conceivable he might have turned 
back. 

As it was, the inner circle was staggered, and 
there was consternation in high places. Jame- 
son's action had upset everything; their schemes, 
Rhodes's schemes, were ruined. What British 
Government, what'' High Commissioner would 
support action of this sort? There were no guns 
to speak of, and little ammunition. The Boers, 
warned in time, were arming to the teeth. Their 
commandos already converged on the Mafeking 
road. 

At the club, that first night, the air was electric. 



62 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

The leaders were not there, and no one seemed 
to know just what was happening; but it was 
taken for granted that Jameson would ride 
through the streets in a day or two, and at the 
thought of a successful revolution, of the final 
overthrow of Krugerism, we shouted so that the 
rafters rang. Quite a number of members were 
drunk. Patriotic songs were sung in unison, and 
as this or that man came in he received an ovation. 
In a moment of exaltation, a gigantic Afrikander 
jumped on the bar. Piled upon it were immense 
numbers of glasses. With his powerful legs he 
swept these to destruction, and stood poised up 
there, the only living thing. Flushed with in- 
tense excitement, he had shattered some hundreds 
of tumblers. 

Rising early next morning, I dressed deliber- 
ately as for a revolution. I wore my oldest suit, 
leggings, and my golfing boots, but discarded 
trousers for riding breeches, as looking a thought 
manlier; then I pressed a wide-brimmed hat on 
my head and made for the streets. My appear- 
ance at once impressed some one in authority, 
whom, I cannot now remember. Taking me to 
Heygate's stables, he pulled aside a heap of 
straw, disclosing a number of rifles. These he 
instructed me to carry, secretly, to a rendezvous 
in Doomfontein, and disappeared. 

I proceeded to commandeer a Cape Boy driving 



THE TORTOISE'S HEAD ' 63 

a wagon and four mules. Loading the wagon 
with rifles, which we again covered with straw, 
I mounted beside him. As we trotted down Com- 
missioner Street, several of the police looked sus- 
picious, but in the general excitement no one 
challenged. I reached Doornfontein safely, and 
handed over my cargo. 

That afternoon there was no need for further 
secrecy. The Govemment had withdrawn the 
police into the fort, and we were free to act. The 
inner circle had not been idle. The Reform Com- 
mittee was in being, a manifesto had been issued, 
volunteers were pouring in, and militar}^ prepara- 
tions were in full swing. 

Our regiment, nucleus of that ''five hundred 
picked men," assembled in Govemment Square 
at 5 p.m. It was the Old Guard of Johannes- 
burg, the aristocracy of the Rand ! Many of its 
members belonged to the club, some drove their 
carriages, and there were men in its ranks who 
played poker with a £2 ''ante." Nor did we 
stand there mere revolutionary riff-raff. It was 
already known among us that some generous 
source behind the Reform Committee was financ- 
ing this rising, and that we were to receive each 
£1 a dav for our services. 

As the sun was setting, our captain rode down 
the lines on a white horse. We cheered him. 
He rose in his stirrups and made a speech; we 



64 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

cheered again. Then, following blindly and sing- 
ing, we marched out of the square and up Hos- 
pital Hill, into the night. 

We marched on to the ridge above the town, 
and were dismissed. We were there, the place of 
honour, to guard the reservoir, and in the probable 
line of attack. It was late, and most found shel- 
ter and sleep within the walls of the unfinished 
Nazareth Home. 

That night, in the brilliant moonlight, the old 
year died. Lying on the ground, I took mid- 
night by my watch, and wondered what the New 
Year would bring forth. At the dawn a bugle 
call summoned us. Turning out, we found our 
camp was increased, Cornish miners and other 
sturdy volunteers having been sent up during the 
night. Arms were being distributed and maga- 
zines filled ; in the grey light unaccustomed hands 
fingered triggers and two rifles went off. An un- 
easy feeling was generated, but there were no 
casualties. 

Two Maxims were being placed in position; 
these we were set to build round with rocks. In 
the afternoon the Nazareth Home was trenched. 
Blankets, stores, and food were pouring in, and 
our regimental cooks began to serve up fairish 
meals. Every now and then some smartly dressed 
young fellow on a polo pony would gallop up, 
give instructions to our officers, and dash off 



THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 65 

again; these were staff officers from headquarters. 

I listened to two Cornish miners handling their 
Lee-Metfords. ''What's this?" said one, point- 
ing to the magazine. "That's for sandwiches." 
That day, too, one of the staff officers, halted in 
his gallop by a bank clerk disguised as a sentry, 
and told to ''Stand, and give the counterfoil!" 
was greatly shocked. At sunset a bugle called us 
out to drill, and sentries were placed a mile out. 

The next night was the most thrilling in my 
life. At dusk, with four others, I went out on 
all-night sentry-go. We were placed beside a 
small wood on the ridge above the town, some 
half a mile from the police fort. It was pitch 
dark, raining heavily, and while two patrolled the 
wood-side the others lay soaking under such shel- 
ter as waterproofs gave. 

Suddenly we started up. From the police fort 
two signal balls of coloured fire had been thrown 
into the air; they were continued, with intervals, 
for an hour. The enemy was stirring. This was 
about ten o'clock. 

Quiet fell again. The rain was heavier than 
ever; as the time passed we were uneasily alert, 
and kept peering into the wood. 

Then from Johannesburg came two rumbling 
explosions. We looked at one another, and some 
one said, "The railway's been blown up." The 



66 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

Staats Artillerie was being rushed through to 
Krugersdorp. 

We were painfully excited. We knew Jameson 
was not far off and that the Boers were closing 
in on him. By two o'clock the rain had nearly 
ceased and the air was clearer. At half-past two, 
from somewhere on the West Rand, came a long, 
low growl. Then another, and another! From 
that distance it was just the growl of a dog. It 
was Jameson's Maxims. They were on him al- 
ready ! 

Five or six times before the dawn there were 
spurts from the Maxims, and then long, silent 
intervals. All the time we patrolled up and 
down and kept peering into the wood. 

Day broke to a renewed burst of firing. The 
rain had stopped, but we were drenched to the 
skin. A feeling of impending calamity was on us ; 
I was disillusioned and depressed; another mem- 
ber of the patrol, in ecstasy of abandonment, 
dragged behind him a mud-covered blanket. So, 
mxarching two and two behind our corporal, we 
returned to the camp. 

Six hours later I awoke, refreshed. I looked 
round surprised, for Nazareth Home was empty; 
there was no one in sight. Taking up my rifle, 
I went outside, and there, lining the trenches to 
overflow, lay the Old Guard. 

''What's the matter?" I cried. 



THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 67 

Some one raised his arm and pointed; coming 
up Bezuidenhout's Valley was a cloud of dust. 

"It's the Boers/' said several, and I, not know- 
ing how Boers approached their foes, thought, 
"It's come at last." 

But it was not the Boers. Some KafRrs were 
driving a herd of cattle up the valley; as the 
leading animals showed through the dust, the 
trenches disgorged. 

There had been distant firing all morning, and 
we felt things were going wrong. A dozen of 
us roamed disconsolately over the veld, and about 
lunch-time were outside E. P. Rathbone's house. 
He was State mining inspector then; officially 
an enemy. But what an enemy ! We were sum- 
moned indoors, and, in less time than I can write 
the words, were sitting down to a superb round 
of beef, with two vegetables. Rathbone and his 
wife served us themselves; and what with the 
good food and the cheerful talk, our spirits went 
up with a bound. 

I have never forgotten that kindly act. Was 
it not the chivalrous Sir Philip Sidney who ten- 
dered a dying soldier his cup of water? To us, 
guardians of Johannesburg's reservoir, such an 
offering had lacked in subtlety. But this stout 
joint, to men downhearted! It was of the very 
essence of fitness. 

Before night fell Jameson and his little army 



68 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

had cripitulated at Doomkop. Next day Cronje 
and his Boers marched them to Pretoria. Far 
off, towards the line of march, rode parties of 
mounted men, and we could see what some one 
called the ''heliotrope" flashing the news from 
hill to hill. 

In those few days we only knew dimly what 
was happening. But the air was full of wildest 
rumours. Jameson and his officers had been shot ! 
The High Commissioner was on his way in a 
special train! Britain was enforcing the suzer- 
ainty! War had been declared! Our Sergeant- 
Major — I will call him Mcintosh — ^brother of a 
then famous prima donna^ announced that two 
hundred and fifty men, with led horses, had ar- 
rived from Natal, and were camped at the City 
and Suburban mine. I was fed up with this sort 
of thing. I said : — 

'T'll bet you a pound that's not true." 

^'Done V' 

I was ''done!" The story was a lie, like the 
rest; but to this day I have not seen the colour of 
his money. 

A fact of psychologic interest at this strange 
time was the curse of militarism which now de- 
scended. Jameson had been for days in Pretoria 
gaol, Boer commandos surrounded the Rand, the 
Staats Artillerie waited the word to blow us to 
pieces, we knew by this time our poverty in arms 



THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 69 

and ammunition ; yet, in spite of this, our military 
leaders, carried away by brief power and author- 
ity, busily built up a fabric of red tape. Promo- 
tions were made, new drills were put into force, 
a poor brute was put on to practise bugle calls, 
and the smart-looking men on polo ponies gal- 
loped faster than ever. One morning the bugle 
summoned us out; a mounted officer rode down 
the line and held up an official paper. 

''Men," he shouted, ''you will be glad to know 
that Captain Goddard has been promoted major.'' 
(Cheers.) 

"Sergeant-Major Mcintosh has been promoted 
to regimental sergeant-major." (Some cheers, 
and a loud voice from the ranks, "Why don't 
you give me that pound?") 

There were other promotions which I cannot 
recall. 

After the officers had left, the Old Guard still 
stood to "attention." I stepped from the ranks. 

I said, "I have been asked to present the regi- 
mental medal for bad drill." All eyes instinc- 
tively turned to G. C. Fitzpatrick, on whose 
breast, with a few gracious words, I pinned the 
tinsel. Then a supreme moment came to me. 
The Old Guard now lacked a sergeant-major. A 
deputation begged that I would accept the post. 

I said, "Gentlemen, I thank you. But it can- 
not be. I went into this thing a private, and a 



70 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

private I Intend to remain." As a matter of fact, 
I saw where we were drifting. Before my mind's 
eye had come a vision of sunrise on the veld, and 
a band of officers, including sergeant-majors, be- 
ing led out by the Boers for execution. So I 
declared for no responsibility. 

After Doornkop I saw the game was up. We 
were under arms for another week, and hard at 
work drilling before daybreak; but I used to walk 
down to the club for lunch. 

One day I heard Lionel Phillips and John Hays 
Hammond address the crowd from the Goldfields 
building. Another, I stood next Sir Sidney Ship- 
pard as he harangued from the balcony of the 
Rand Club. In the aftemoons I drove back to 
camp, taking a few luxuries to eat and drink, and 
we sat down to a game of poker. 

The last phase came on or about January 9th. 
The Boers sent in to demand our surrender. If 
we refused, they were to blow Johannesburg to 
pieces. It was no idle threat. 

There was indecision in the councils of the 
Reform Committee ; still more among our military 
staff. Our position was, of course, hopeless; but 
there seemed to be a feeling that the rank and file 
under arms would refuse to lay down their rifles, 
and that much futile bloodshed might follow. 

The Old Guard was summoned, informally, to 
confer with its commander. He laid the case 



THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 71 

before us. The gist of his argument was, ''Keep 
your rifles. Fight it out.'' It was bad advice — 
indeed, sheer madness ; but the men were flattered. 
They saw themselves emerging bloody, but vic- 
torious. There were cries of ''We'll follow you !" 
"Never give in !" "Stick to our rifles !" 

When the uproar had calmed, I said, "What's 
the use of talking about rifles? The Reform 
Committee will have to surrender, and the rifles 
will be the first things to be given up." 

A howl of execration met me. I saw in their 
eyes the glare of men waiting for a scapegoat, 
and knew if I said more they would tear me limb 
from limb. So I left the meeting and went off 
to lunch at the club, where I learned the true 
drift of things. 

That evening, by command of the Reform 
Committee, every rifle was handed over to the 
Boers. The camp was emptied, the Old Guard 
was disbanded, and I slept comfortably in my own 
bed. 

The revolution was at an end. We had been 
nine days under arms, and received each, some 
thousands of us, a cheque for £9. Among the Old 
Guard many presented their cheques to the Johan- 
nesburg Hospital. Mine I spent on myself, thus 
losing for all time to come my amateur status. 

The statement has often been made that the 
people of Johannesburg were cowards, who, after 



72 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

asking Jameson to come to their aid, left him 
deliberately to his fate. This is just as much a 
lie as the rumours which gained credence in those 
days. 

From the leaders downward, the people of 
Johannesburg had their full share of pluck. Had 
there been fighting, as was expected daily, they 
would have put up a good fight. 

The Reform Committee, sitting day and night, 
shirked no responsibility. The leaders them- 
selves showed they possessed other virtues than 
money. They came out of the thing well. It is 
to those few days in council, for example, that 
George Farrar owes his present position. 

What could we have done? Jameson, by his 
action, had ruined everything. To rise, after he 
had cut the wires and crossed the border, gave us 
no political status. We had few arms and little 
ammunition. We were unmounted. Ere we had 
gone a mile to meet him we had been blown to 
pieces. 

The leaders stood by Jameson through it all. 
When the world, not knowing the truth, called 
them cowards and craven, they answered with 
never a word, taking the obloquy. There was 
much of the essence of farce in this revolution; 
but the men who ran it did their duty in the face 
of heavy odds, and the rank and file were ready 
to do theirs. We were not shirkers. 



THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 73 

And the strangest thing of all is Jameson's 
career. Handed over to our Government by 
Kruger, he went to prison for a season. In after- 
years, the political mantle of the dead Colossus 
fell on him. He became Premier of the Cape. 
There, by his magnetic charm and real ability, 
he did the work of a statesman. He was loved 
by the English, respected by the Dutch. The 
man who once set Africa ablaze lived to become 
a potent factor toward its ultimate unification. 



CHAPTER IV 



' LIFE S LIQUOR 

The passion for travel, which has given my 
life its bent, was to tear me from my beloved 
South Africa. I left there in 1897. Like others, 
I needed to work; since the old Nigel days I 
have inspected more than five hundred mines. 
But, work or no work, I had to travel ; my brain, 
my whole being, never left that in doubt. Be- 
fore I was forty I had seen the world from end 
to end. 

After the most fatuous "mining'" course on 
record, I left Cambridge just one of that mass of 
well-reared, half-educated, almost useless young 
men whom the British system turns out year after 
year. I was a gentleman, but no mining engineer. 
I could row, and play billiards, and drink claret 
cup, but was no earthly use with a theodolite. 
Yet mining is a fine profession; it calls for char- 
acter, ability, and men fit for any station, and 
that the social Universities practically bar the 
would-be mining engineer is one of the many lines 
along which they fail. We have need of our best 
in mining, brainy men, men of breeding, because 

74 



"LIFE'S LIQUOR" 75 

the interests at stake are national — for example, 
we control 60 per cent, of the world's output of 
gold. We must, too, keep in the running with the 
United States. The Americans lead the world 
in mining, and have built up a stupendous indus- 
try. They have great mineral resources to draw 
on, it is true, yet not greater than those of the 
British Empire. But in America the mining engi- 
neer is high in the social scale; he ranks with 
the best; he is a college man, following up with 
a technical education at one or other of the Uni- 
versities that puts our technical system to shame. 
He is credited with brains far above the ruck. 
An American mining engineer, well known to me, 
was offered, and declined, the post of Minister 
to China. 

Now what is the position of the mining 
engineer in English society? To many people 
he figures as a superior mechanic; to others he 
is the superintendent of a coalpit ; to women, who 
are extraordinarily vague in these things, he is 
a sort of stoker, and to a mother in society, even 
where no butler might be kept, a mining engineer 
as a parti would be unthinkable. 

I want to see these things altered. Some of 
our best and brainiest are needed in mining, be- 
cause its value to the nation increases each year. 
Your great engineer of the future will mean more 
to the state than any bishop. 



76 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

I developed a great love of gold-mining. On 
the Rand, in 1893, I spent my Saturday after- 
noons walking along the deep levels, and gauged 
their value. I bought block after block, in my 
mind's eye, while Alfred Beit bought them for 
cash and made his millions. In later years, when 
the Rand went deep-level mad, I was first to 
point out that these mines were poorer than the 
shallower mines, and the finance of many of them 
unsound. I was laughed at, then reviled. But I 
knew my facts, and time proved me only too 
right. In any mining question, instinct guided 
me at once to the money aspect. Would it pay? 
I saw clever men absorbed in side issues — in geol- 
ogy, in machinery, in electric schemes — things of 
secondary importance ; for me, if a mine was poor, 
if it even looked shaky, all the geology of Lyell, 
all the electric erudition of Siemens and Halske, 
were as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. 

Specializing in my own branch — in mine valu- 
ation — I gave up the executive side; not through 
dislike, but because I wanted freedom to travel. 
I valued mines, I wrote reports, but my physical 
labours, except in sampling work, were at an end. 

I have often regretted this; not deeply, but a 
little wistfully. It is pleasant to visit a mine, to 
spend some weeks over a valuation, and then to 
be off elsewhere ; yet deep down in me is the idea 
that the man who sticks to one mine, who builds 



"LIFE'S LIQUOR" 77 

it up from a mere prospect into a great organiza- 
tion, has chosen the better part. Such a man 
builds up his character with his mine; he creates, 
he gives to the world more than he takes. Re- 
tiring at length, a master craftsman, he looks back 
upon a work begun, succeeding, carried through 
— upon an existence holding all the elements of 
thoroughness. 

I feel I was bom to manage a great mine. The 
qualities were there — financial, executive, admin- 
istrative — though I did not use them. With na- 
tives, too, I could do anything. I have known 
for years that the greatest problem of the Rand 
lies in the technical — not the mental — education 
of the Kaffir. Given a mine to run, I had carried 
this education of black muscles some stages for- 
ward a decade ago. 

But these are vain imaginings; I have never 
run a gold-mine, and now I never shall. Yet 
those ideal assay plans! Those ore-reserves — 
"'probable,'' and "on three sides," and near the 
million mark! Those clean, narrow stopes, 
through which I should have passed by day, and 
often, too, by night! Those wonderful analyses 
of labour and of expenditure! — things that once 
flowered as daydreams, that seethed in my brain 
as actualities, are now withered and nearly dead. 

Still, I can value a mine, clarify facts into small 



78 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

compass, and write a report. These, in their way, 
are proper things, and I must not complain. 

For fifteen years I was more or less behind the 
scenes in metal-mining. I knew the managers on 
every field and the leading engineers in every cen- 
tre. I knew just how mines were developing all 
over the world — ^how this one was improving, this 
declining, and that other being forced for stock- 
jobbing. My knowledge of the personnel of the 
mining world was unique. I knew that one man's 
nod meant everything to me, and another's 
twenty-page report nothing at all. I carry in my 
head a list of technical blackguards that is pe- 
culiarly replete, and in the streets of San Fran- 
cisco it was given me to cut an archplotter of these 
gentry dead. 

As to the speculative side of mining — a differ- 
ent sphere — the more I got to know, the less I 
gambled. I found out early that the market value 
of a mine need have no relation to the intrinsic; 
that nearly all mines are over-valued, and that 
bargains are few and far between. Not that I 
disapprove of speculation; far from it, but one 
wants better value for money than is seen in the 
mining list. Beware the mine that is puffed. 
Beware the type of director who takes the cream 
off early information. Mines are harmless things 
in themselves, but the men who control them are 
rarely harmless. How needful it is that the men 



" "LIFE'S LIQUOR" 79 

who work them shall be above suspicion ! Mining 
shares are bought, as a rule, on sentiment — on the 
swing of the pendulum. One day sentiment is 
good, and a hundred Rand shares go up. Senti- 
ment continues good, and they go up further. 
After a time there is a burst of buying, almost a 
"'boom," and yet there has been no change what- 
ever in intrinsic values. 

The public gambles in this way because it must. 
It is in the nature of things. They take immense 
risks, and rarely stand to win; but if they choose 
so to act, who is to interfere? I once thought 
it my mission to educate the public about mines. 
I got over that, even as I got over trying to edu- 
cate my friends. A mining engineer should not 
give casual advice. Let things go well, and the 
recipients fawn upon him; but let the pendulum 
swing, and vituperation is not the word. He 
meant well ; but he stood to gain nothing and to 
lose a lot. Believe me, it is a fool's game. 

Advice given free is little valued. I was 
closeted once with a merchant in Glasgow. He 
said, ''You wrote a report on West Australian 
mines for my friend, which I saw, and acted on. 
I bought shares which to-day show a profit of 
£180,000. What am I to do?" I said, "It is no 
concern of mine, and in a matter like this you are 
not likely to be guided by any one ; still, I beg of 
you to sell out at once, and realize.'' 



80 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

But, like Naaman the Syrian, the advice he got 
was too simple. Worse, he had gotten it for 
nothing, and gave it therefore little heed. He 
decided not to sell. The market, in course of 
time, fell appreciably, his great profit melted 
away, and presently, like that other in the Scrip- 
ture story, ''He went out a leper as white as 
snow.'' 

In speculation there is a sound maxim: stick 
to what you know. Mines I know, and, with 
patience, chances come. But Rails I don't know, 
and some years ago stood to lose a large sum of 
money. I had bought shares in a line I shall call 
the New Central; but the better times foretold 
for this road had failed to eventuate. The price 
was sagging away; I was disgusted, yet unwilling 
to take definite action and cut my loss. The line 
was controlled, and its bonds held, by a man we 
will call Murphy, a great capitalist, whose knowl- 
edge of the psychology of share markets was re- 
puted profound. 

One day I read a cable in the press. It said 
something like this: "Mr. Murphy, the railroad 
magnate, has presented a cathedral to New Edin- 
burgh.'' I read the words again, and my hands 
that held the paper shook as with palsy. Holy 
Moses! Did I, a child, think to match myself 
with such as these? But there was yet time. I 
cabled that day to my agents, ''Sell my New 



"LIFE'S LIQUOR" 81 

Centrals at once/' They were sold, and my loss 
was considerable; but within a year the road was 
in the receiver's hands, and the shares went for 
an old song. I keep to mines now. I find it safer. 
I want a new goldfield. The baser metals 
fluctuate too much; gold only is stable. Except- 
ing the fields in Nevada, and the dredging of 
gravels in Siberia and Alaska, there has been no 
big field discovered for twenty years. I rack my 
brains for a locality. I travel to and fro unceas- 
ingly. I watch for the slightest sign. I pray 
that a great goldfield lies in the womb of the near 
future. 

As I sought out the world's beauties, so I 
have searched for her best peoples. The nations, 
first and last, have passed before me. They are 
like men — ^good, bad, indifferent — to be judged, 
too, like men, with tolerance, for environment is 
the controlling factor. 

The peoples to whom I find myself closest — 
the virile and intelligent among the nations — are 
the Americans, the Scandinavians, the Chinese, 
and, if we may call them a nation, the Jews. 
With these races I find myself in sympathy, from 
them I can learn; I can respect them — in brief, 
they are my affinities. 

I would we had the vitality, the wit, of the 
average American. The Americans come first 



82 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

with me. They must come first; they are largely 
of our blood. Foolish old George HI, whom 
chance made a king, and Nature endowed with 
the stubbornness of a mule, sundered us. Inde- 
pendence Day, the revolt of common sense against 
autocracy, should be a festival for all men of 
British race. The American is changing. Other 
strains begin to course in his blood, and environ- 
ment, that potent factor, is creating a new type. 
The climate chisels those clear-cut Indian profiles 
that are so attractive, even as it causes the nasal 
twang that is not. 

The strong points of the American — ^his energy, 
his big ideas, his mastery of material problems — 
are known to all the world. Those who will not 
acknowledge his supremacy in these are distorted 
in vision or jealous. In my own profession I 
find a visit to the States quickens me. I feel 
new thoughts at work, big brains shaping big 
schemes, energy all around me. My brain catches 
something of this, and responds. These men 
make me think, and I am grateful. 

Where money is concerned, the average Ameri- 
can's standard is held to be lax. Yet who are we 
to judge? Beside other men, is his sin more than 
a matter of degree? We have our own under- 
world, where army contracts are given out, where 
municipal jobbery exists, where our retired, dis- 
tinguished men become City parasites, and where 



^'LIFE'S LIQUOR" 83 

titles are flagrantly bought and sold. The Ameri- 
can's sin (though I do not extenuate it) is largely 
the product of environment: for in this great, 
new, rich land, where fortunes are to be had for 
the grasping, and where the able men, the leaders, 
are still amassing, public opinion is yet in flux. 
In time, they will turn from private to national 
affairs, public opinion will crystallize, and the 
States settle down to such a stable moral level as 
our frail human nature permits. 

It is not all money-making with the Ameri- 
can. Some years ago a funeral passed under the 
flamboyants and tamarinds at Bangkok, and a 
grave received one Strobel, legal adviser to the 
King. Chulalongkorn, that intelligent monarch, 
attended for the first time a Christian burial, and 
said these words to those there assembled: "This 
man was a foreigner, an American, yet he was my 
trusted friend, and the best adviser Siam ever had. 
I deeply mourn his loss." 

The American, to sum him up, is crudely 
emotional, weak in his handling of women, and 
sets dollar-making as the goal of life; he is men- 
tally alert, can concentrate on and succeed in any 
path of life, he is a compeller of nature, above 
all men a doer of things, humorous, and sound at 
heart. I am for the Americans first, last, and all 
the time. 

The Scandinavians, that is to say Danes, Nor- 



84 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

wegians, Swedes, and Finns, are the most ad- 
vanced peoples of the world. They belong to 
what we call the ''Minor Powers,'' but in the 
value they extract from life are altogether ahead 
of British and Americans. 

Scandinavians are, without exception, soundly 
educated. Tending to things of the mind, they 
produce artists, scientists, and men distinguished 
in life, out of all proportion to their numbers. 
This high note of intelligence is reflected in the 
faces of their women, adding quite markedly (if 
I except the Finns) to their sexual attractions. 
These people have solved problems we have not 
begun to solve. Life is evener with them ; money 
and happiness more divided than among us. 
There is still the struggle for wealth; but there 
are many who do not participate, who, with mod- 
erate, even small possessions, are well balanced 
and contented, drawing from education and their 
own minds a satisfaction with life which we often 
lack. 

The problem of poverty, easier no doubt for 
small States than for great, has been solved, and 
the old are well cared for. The drink curse, 
much less rampant than with us, has been taken 
in hand. In the Swedish city of Gottenburg a 
man cannot get drunk; but, by way of compen- 
sation, for the payment of one penny can spend 
his evening in Tradgardsf orenigen. This garden, 



"LIFE'S LIQUOR" 85 

on a summer's night, is perhaps the loveliest spot 
in Europe. It is full of fine old trees and thou- 
sands of flowers; there is a good restaurant, and 
a first-rate military band: if the weather is cold 
or wet, the concert is held under cover. Thus 
Gottenburg treats its citizens, and a more lovely 
garden or a more contented crowd I have rarely 
seen. 

Denmark has solved the problem of agriculture 
and stock-rearing, or, more correctly, the problem 
of the peasant proprietor. The thriftless, unedu- 
cated Briton of the same social grade, handi- 
capped no doubt by the land laws, is many years 
behind the Dane in this great branch of progress. 

The Swedes are a scientific people; they are 
advanced in the application of chemistry, and in 
the use of the telephone lead the world. A Swede 
is one of the greatest living physicists. They are 
blessed with a fair land. Stockholm, in summer, 
is the most charming city in all Europe, and the 
steamers that sail out nightly for the Gulf of 
Finland or the island of Gotland traverse a sound 
of surpassing beauty. 

The Swede is a German with a Frenchman's 
polish. He is the least stable of the Scandina- 
vians, and is held to be rather insincere. The 
Swedish woman is a fine creature; together with 
the Austrian, I place her first of her sex. 

The Norwegian, living by rock-girt, stormy 



86 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

coast or lonely fjord, is a gloomy man. The 
sound of the waves beating in winter has echoed 
in a hundred generations of Norwegian brains; 
how shall he then be else? Note in his capital, 
Christiania, the psychologic gloom — the effect on 
architecture of his predominating mood; the pal- 
ace, the parliament, the national theatre are som- 
bre in the extreme. Christiania is a city in a 
minor key. 

Yet, beneath his gloom, the Norwegian is a 
thinker, an intellectueL This cold Northerner is 
fired by imagination, his soul finds expression in 
art, and that Ibsen, Bjomson, Grieg, foremost in 
the art of their day, should have been born, and 
lived, at one and the same time in this small com- 
munity is a fact of profound interest. A people 
less thoughtful than these, at the time of sever- 
ance from Sweden, might have declared for a re- 
public. They pondered the matter; thej^ declared 
for a constitutional king, and this small people's 
action against the wave of republicanism is again 
matter for serious thought. The sad note in the 
Norwegian is undoubted; yet it is the sadness of 
the sea, not of despair. Statistics show that he 
takes his own life one-third as often as the more 
joyous Swede, and one-fourth as often as that 
deep questioner of life, the ''melancholy Dane.'* 

The Finn I sometimes think of as the most 
Christlike of men. Longsuffering, his ideals 



"LIFE'S LIQUOR" 8T 

stifled by his ethical inferiors, his ugly face seems 
stamped with sadness. Those who know, while 
admitting his virtues, point to a dourness in him, 
to a political stubbornness, which Russia met with 
tolerance, and to his bitter jealousy of the many 
and more enlightened Swedes who live in his 
land. Granted. Yet I know the Finns to be 
mild, kind, simple-natured. A Finn has given 
me his berth on a crowded steamer, railway guards 
have refused my tips, and to others of the race I 
owe many a kindly act. One does not forget 
these things. The forests, with their clearings, 
and the lakes of Finland are not the least among 
the pleasant stretches of Scandinavia; they shel- 
ter a people from whom we have much to learn. 

Now, here should have stood the German. A 
man cannot forget the joy of his youth; and the 
joy of mine, over several years, lay in South Ger* 
many. Here were spacious and seemly cities; 
pleasant country roads, where hung unmolested 
in summer time apples and plums and peaches; 
deep forests, where you walked for solitude; riv- 
ers banked by mediaeval castles, and by vineyards 
yielding incomparable wine ; and over all was the 
glamour of music. I could not but feel for the 
Germans what I felt for Germany. 

I was wrong. These gifted, diligent, disci- 
plined people were already organising a dreadful 



88 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

sin; and a time was coming which would prove 
them traitors to our human race. 

But let the past bury its dead. We, Britons 
and Americans, have got to give the Germans an- 
other chance. Common sense demands we should 
trade with them; fair play demands they should 
have a hearing, and justice, and that we bear our- 
selves even with sympathy where it is possible. I, 
the agnostic, tell you that. In the Bible, five 
righteous men were able to save Sodom and Go- 
morrah; and there are more than five in Ger- 
many. 

I do not say we shall succeed. But we may — '• 
sometimes. In the war my brother was mortally 
wounded. The Germans carried him to Bohain 
hospital, and there came later to my sister "quite 
a nice letter from the chief doctor, who seems to 
have been a decent sort of man." I am going to 
give this man and his fellows a chance — for my 
brother's memory\ 

The German, in the years to come, may do one 
of two things. He may harden his heart, and 
seek revenge. To do this, he will ally himself 
with Russia, raising Russia from the dust, organ- 
ising that vast population, those limitless re- 
sources, and later, it may be, link up with Japan 
in a powerful alliance. Or he may soften his 
heart, and seek that respect he has lost. This is 
not so wild a surmise. The Law of Reaction (we 



"LIFE'S LIQUOR" 89 

cannot formulate it, but it is a law) will keep 
pulling the German for decades to come. When 
in its grip, if we handle him wisely, we may yet 
see good come out of evil, and things develop to 
a human solution. 

The Jews are the most gifted among the na- 
tions; they are, truly, the ''Chosen People/' 
Their eminence, relative to their numbers, in art, 
in literature, in music, in finance and in many 
other paths of human effort, is quite extraordi- 
nary. Their women, as I have remarked in 
Odessa, Warsaw, and other Jewish centres, are 
in their youth notable for their beauty. The 
Jew is many-sided; his facets are those of the 
diamond — ^his chosen stone. The dirtiest, the 
vulgarest people I have known have been Jews, 
and some of the most refined; the grossest ma- 
terialists are Jews, and the truest idealists. There 
is in the Jew a strong vein of poetry, running to 
mysticism; he is an Oriental still. 

The Jew is not so much intellectual, as in- 
nately, weirdly shrewd and gifted; he rises with 
lesser effort than others. His cast of countenance 
is rather repellent, his manners are too florid, he 
is rarely what the British call ''good form"; but 
he is goodnatured, he does not hit back, his women 
are extraordinarily faithful to him, and, setting 
aside my admitted predilection, I believe him an 



90 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

altogether better man than his jealous Christian 
rivals allow. 

And the Chinaman ! As the Englishman is the 
personality among Western peoples, so is the 
Chinam_an in the East. The personality, the char- 
acter of China, of these 400,000,000, is a very- 
prof ound fact in the world; beside it, Japan re- 
cedes in the distance, and Siam, Korea, the Malay 
peoples, and the rest, count for nothing at all. 

There is only one man in the East who can 
stand up to the Chinaman — the Hindu, and he 
lacks character. These two, between them, will 
eat up the smaller peoples and stand some day 
face to face; but in time even the Hindu will go 
down before the better man. I do not speak of 
war; in the unchanging East these things are 
left to time. The Chinaman, a giant among men, 
is, and may ever be, a child in war; he is so 
peace-loving that the "Yellow Peril," so far as 
he is concerned, is the crudest of conceptions. 

The Chinaman was civilised while we dwelt 
in forests. He had evolved religion, philosophy, 
and the highest conceptions of art and beauty 
while we yet stained ourselves with woad and pur- 
sued our quarry with a meat axe. To-day, with 
our blissful ignorance of China, we call the peo- 
ple heathen, and send a swarm of missionaries to 
preach doctrines that our ablest men have already 
discarded. These men preach twenty different 



"LIFE'S LIQUOR" 91 

creeds, they advocate love, peace, longsuffering; 
but let so much as one missionary be killed or 
injured, and the clamour for compensation and 
revenge, backed always by threats of armed re- 
taliation, resounds through the lane. The China- 
man, highly intelligent, sees the irony of it all. 
Our various creeds, jealous, narrow, preaching sal- 
vation through twenty channels, bewilder him. 
He wants none of our religion; he has told us so 
a hundred times. 

What is needed in China is the doctor, man 
or woman, who will live among the people, cure 
their ills, and make their temporal lot happier. 
There are, I am glad to say, many of this type 
already in China, and they are doing a great and 
noble work ; but the missionaries, after due consid- 
eration, I should keep out. 

The regeneration of China, along the lines of 
Japan, I do not look for in our time. By ''re- 
generation" I mean reorganization of govern- 
ment; for the Chinaman, industrious, honest, 
peaceful as to the great majority, is not in serious 
need of regeneration. But good government is 
mainly a matter of sound finance, and the system 
of corruption in Chinese official circles will pre- 
vent anything like sound finance for a long time 
to come. Can the leopard change his spots? Can 
the Chinese official — can any Eastern official — 
look at the money question as many of us do? If 



92 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

regeneration keep out the missionary, if it keep 
out the European, except on reciprocal terms, well 
and good; but a civilized China, with armies and 
navies, entering into the hierarchy of the ''Great 
Powers," is not the sort of China that appeals to 
me. 

The spirit of change makes headway in China, 
as it is doing in all lands, but along Chinese rather 
than European cleavage lines. There are think- 
ers who fear that China, equipped on an industrial 
and manufacturing basis, would swamp the world 
with cheap goods. I do not hold with this; but 
if such a condition does come, it will in any case 
come slowly. The Chinaman is conceited ; he will 
try to organize and run these industries himself, 
and he will fail. The biggest new industry of 
China might be in steel, for the coal and iron de- 
posits in the interior are almost limitless ; but the 
menace of cheap Chinese steel, produced with Chi- 
nese capital, under Chinese organization, will not 
happen in our time. 

The Chinaman as an agriculturist, a merchant, 
a banker, a miner, a sailor — in fact, in almost 
any branch of life — is a success. With his 
shrewd, humorous face, his character, and his per- 
sonality, one is bound to like him ; he is a general 
favourite. Of all Orientals he is nearest to us. 
He, like us, is a materialist, whose God is his 
belly, and where other Orientals cat to live, he 



"LIFE'S LIQUOR" 9S 

eats for the relish and delight of eating. The 
Chinaman is ubiquitous. Turned from Australia, 
Java, and the Pacific Coast, he has overrun the 
Sandwich Islands, Borneo, the Malay States, and 
all the islands of the Far East. He is slowly ab- 
sorbing Siam; he swarms in Rangoon, and as I 
rode through the Shan States, his mule trains 
passed me bound for the ruby mines at Mogok. 
He has made Hong-Kong for us, and the Malay 
States. Singapore is his elysium; he drives his 
brougham there, gambles in our mining shares, sits 
on our town councils, and watches his sons play 
football and cricket. 

If I add any other to my afRnities, let it be the 
Zulus — a black and a minor race, yet the physical 
aristocrats of humanity, and as cheerful, kindly 
and right living a people as one may hope to see. 
Mentally, the Zulu is a child; yet for many of 
these men — labourers on farms, wagon drivers, 
house servants, or quiet dwellers in their own 
kraals — I have the sincerest liking and respect. 
To the memor\^ of N'Konjane (''the Swallow")' 
and to Shingaan, a kehle — or head of a family — 
who came every year from the thorn country to 
the farm, and who, after many years of faithful 
work, at last came not, I raise my hat. 

I am a favoured person with the Kaffirs, as, in- 
deed, with many of the coloured peoples. They 



94* THE SHADOW-SHOW 

see that I like them, that I sympathize, and, just 
as whites do, they return sympathy fourfold. But 
why aren't we all beloved by these children? 
Why isn't every white man a god in their eyes? 
Tactfully handled, the subject races can be 
moulded as wax, for good. I pray my dealings 
with them ^e never for evil. 



CHAPTER V 

WOMEN 

In a market-place, on the shores of Victoria 
Nyanza, an animated crowd of women bought and 
sold; it was market-day, yet some hundreds of 
women wore neither bead nor fig-leaf. 

To one moving in good feminine society much 
has been revealed, a few inches of cloth, indeed, 
being neither here nor there ; that in this instance 
they should be there, not here, was the only re- 
flection I allowed myself. 

These women of Central Africa, who go thus 
naked and unashamed, are of the Kavirondo tribe. 
They rub their bodies to a rich polish with oil, 
which under an equatorial sun gives forth a sicken- 
ing stench; with small skull, and retreating fore- 
head, they rank low in the African scale. 

Riding alone in the Bolivian Andes, I have 
passed Indian women who raised their hats — an 
uncanny thing. I knew these women to be primi- 
tive, filthy, given over to drunken debauches, yet 
the idea that they should defer to a man was not 
nice. I don't want hat-raising or curtsey from 
the lowest woman on earth. 

95 



96 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

Not so with the black man. "In this part of 
West Africa," said an official, "I have seen prob- 
ably eighty funerals of men and only three of 
women. When the women become too old for 
the last offices, those of carrying wood and water, 
they are led out one dark night into the forest, 
and they do not return'' A gruesome profession 
this of 'leader out" to the village, loathed of 
incipient beldams ; yet once in a life-time we may 
conceive him leading-out with a relish, and his 
wife next day going into deep mourning. 

Those Kavirondo of the market-place, like the 
women of so many coloured races, were perfect 
in figure. I have noticed that civilization is not 
kind to the female form. The well-cared-for 
woman of the West compresses her body into a 
corset, her feet into small shoes ; she does no work, 
she eats, instinctively, the indigestible foods. In 
spite of all she sometimes retains a figure, but, 
such is the cunning of the corsetiere^ one can never 
be certain. 

I am, I hope, loyal to the women of my tribe • 
but there is this advantage in the scantily clad 
savage — her husband knows what he is getting. 
There is no false hair, no false bust. Hers is no 
"make-up" figure. She "delivers the goods." 

In many of the uncivilized races, right up to 
the high castes of India, the young women under- 
take hard, manual toil, and carry heavy burdens 



WOMEN 97 

on their heads. This, with open-air life, regular 
hours, no clothes to speak of. and extreme sim- 
plicity in food, usually leads to physical perfec- 
tion. Up to the age of twenty-two, these women 
pur all others, physically, in the shade. After 
that, what with climate, environment, and lack 
of stamina, they go to pieces, and the women of 
civilization, buoyed up with hope and whale-bone, 
come into their kingdom. 

Evanescent though it be, there is real beauty 
among coloured women. The most perfect female 
form I have seen was a Hindu girl in Mauritius; 
the loveliest face, that of an Arab girl of Tunis, 
who already, at the age of twenty-five, is sestheti- 
cally dead. There is, among the Arabs, a strain 
of wondrous beauty; but, as with all Mahometans, 
the women live in complete seclusion, or go veiled 
from the eyes of men. 

The women of India are comely when young, 
and often beautiful. In Kashmir, where the 
average standard is low, I have yet seen, here and 
there, the most beautiful women in Asia. These 
are of the bold, Romany type, finer than the hand- 
somest gipsy women of Hungary. I should like 
to match these picked Kashmiris with the hand- 
somest young Jewesses of Odessa. 

For comeliness of the negro type, there is no 
one to compare with the Zulu girl. South of the 
equator she is the native belle. Deep brown in 



98 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

colour, her head is large, and her forehead well 
developed. She has perfect teeth, she is tall, and 
her figure is superb. She dresses in a loin cloth, 
or, in the hot weather, in a little arrangement of 
beads, but is never entirely nude. Judged on her 
own plane, she is strikingly handsome. Later, 
her tendency is towards fatness. Among the Zulu 
chiefs, genuine fatness in women is highly valued ; 
I even imagine "likely" looking girls to be fed 
up, with the idea of catching a chief's eye. 
Among the wives of Cetewayo were women who 
must have scaled their 300 lbs. 

The almond-eyed women of Asia, judged by 
our standards, are not beautiful. As to figure, 
they rarely come up to the five-foot-five a tall man 
finds so attractive, and many, especially among 
the Japanese, are so short as to lose aesthetic sig- 
nificance. And yet these types of women, among 
whom may be classed Japanese, Burmese, Siamese, 
Javanese, and Malay, are quite alluring. They 
are fastidiously clean and dainty, they are shapely 
little creatures — what one may call well appointed 
— they take their calling, as women, seriously, 
they lay themselves out by instinct to attract, and 
if the male who comes along is white, so much the 
better. At the back of my head lies the idea that 
these almond-eyed ones take love lightly, refusing 
their caresses to no man with a purse; yet why 
carp at this if they are charming? 



WOMEN 99 

The women of China are downright plain, and 
because of their distorted feet have no grace of 
movement; but in one respect they are above 
rubies. They are, probably, the only race of 
coloured women who are not attracted by the 
prestige of the white man, and who, with rare ex- 
ceptions, will have nothing to do with him. 

With hooked noses — Armenian rather than 
Jewish — and mostly spectacled, the Parsee women 
of Bombay are the plainest in the East. But they 
are ''advanced" women beyond all in the East, 
educated, and highly serious, whose interests be- 
gin to lie outside the home. 

In Europe, too, the plainest women — the Finns 
— are politically the most advanced. They may 
do whatever they please ; they may even be mem- 
bers of Parliament. Anything that takes plain 
races of women from their homes would seem to 
be encouraged; but whether this be mere coinci- 
dence, or something profoundly sinister, would be 
hard to determine. 

Among the white women of civilization, to 
whom, think you, is the palm to be given? 

Here is a typical English girl — good-looking, 
well-built, caste-ridden as any Brahmin, mentally 
insipid. 

Beside her is a young American, paler in face, 
more nervy and spirited — a racer beside a trot- 
ting mare. Mentally alert and more of a com- 



100 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

panion, she is nevertheless spoilt, and takes herself 
too seriously. 

Here is a Frenchwoman. Not so handsome as 
intelligent, yet exuding feminity, an artiste in sex, 
and the charmer of man par excellence. 

Here is an Austro-Hungarian — and in her you 
find beauty and passion together. Reckless her 
love may be, nomadic oerhaps, but to me a most 
alluring creature. 

There is beauty in the Balkans — in Servia, and 
little Montenegro — ^beauty, but, withal, discre- 
tion. 

Here are dark Latin women of the South. 
Narrow of outlook, priestridden, splashed with 
powder — they do not charm. For me, dark eyes 
flash behind lattices in vain, and the light guitar 
twangeth to no response. 

My affinity lies in the Gothic North; Aus- 
trians, Russians, Germans, and Scandinavians 
are the women of my dreams. A wintry land- 
scape, with a fairish woman in her furs, is civil- 
ization's masterpiece. 

Who is this ? So blond, so physically fine, so 
entirely neat, in her face intelligence — and a 
trace of the devil! She is a Swede, and the 
woman whom we have sought. By a short head 
she bears the palm from the Austrians. Step for- 
ward, Froken, and deign to accept this chaplet! 



WOMEN 101 

With women, as indeed with man, flattery is 
still the trump card. It need not be gross ; as her 
status rises the trowel may be discarded for the 
camel's hair, but the surest method of attack is 
always going to be through her vanity. This is 
sound reasoning, for her instinct, the whole busi- 
ness of her life, is to please; nature's doing this, 
yet recognized by man as a strong weapon to his 
own ends. 

But the world is obsessed by this adulation of 
the woman. If one picks up a novel it is written 
round incidents of romantic love and marriage. 
If one goes to a play there is more love and 
marriage; everywhere you find the female inter- 
est pandered to, until at last this orgy of senti- 
mentalism begins to pall. And the world goes 
further. Praising not only admitted virtues — 
self-denial, the brave facing of drudgery, sym- 
pathy, pity — it ascribes to her exceptional intel- 
lect and high ethical status, qualities the average 
woman does not possess. In novels and plays 
women are not only beautiful, but often creatures 
of depth and subtlety, twisting strong men round 
their fingers. In real life one does not see these 
things; when strong men are twisted, they are 
twisted through their senses, not by the woman's 
brains. 

And so with ethics. On the stage you will hear 
a woman say, ''Reginald, rather than think you 



102 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

guilty of dishonour I would see you dead at my* 
feet/' (Loud applause.) But in real life the 
female code of honour is not highly developed. 
A badly dressed Reginald would cause her a far 
acuter grief. 

There is a fish in Australian waters, the bar- 
racouta, that is baited with a red rag. You will 
find a red rag, too, the deadliest bait for women, 
for it is glamour — what Scripture calls the "lust 
of the eye" — as much as their vaunted intuition 
which sways them. Women worship appearance. 
Tremendous value is attached to symbols; and 
caste, titles, precedence, uniforms, fine clothes, 
jewels, coats of arms, elegant carriages and cock- 
ades — red rags all — are the baits at which they 
rise. 

The worship of the military caste by woman 
also has its psychologic explanation. She notes 
the uniform; and even as the brilliant tail of the 
peacock attracts to it the hen, so do the clothes 
of soldiers draw the eyes of women. The soldier 
is of good physique, smart and erect, and above 
all is held to be brave. That hits the female in 
a vital spot, for instinct makes her seek a pro- 
tector, and who shall protect like a brave man? 
Here again, with the woman, appearance is every- 
thing. In real life the barrister, the chemist's 
assistant, the under gardener, is as brave as the 
soldier, and possibly cleverer; but he doesn't look 



WOMEN 103 

it, he isn't so erect, he has neither uniform nor 
medals, so her eye passes him over. The military 
caste lives in the light of woman's eyes, withdraw 
that light, and soldiering w^ould become unpopu- 
lar, the supply of officers fall short, conscription 
itself be barely tolerated, and organized war even 
come to an end. Woman's influence, therefore, 
for or against war, is a prime factor. 

It is here we note that interesting product, 
the American woman; I play her at this point, 
my strongest card. Generations of republican 
training have left her — a woman ; lover of glam- 
our, aristocrat at heart, she worships appearance; 
for titles, caste and precedence she will sell half 
her soul. 

Sexual cold-bloodedness in women is no rare 
thing. That the American woman should pass 
over her physically fine countryman, for a man 
on the average physically inferior, but surrounded 
by the glamour of title and precedence, is hardly 
noteworthy; but that she should pass over a man 
who puts her on a pedestal, for one who treats 
her with a lesser consideration, is of psychologic 
interest. The woman's instinct is to look up to 
the man, not down; when her own men resume 
the position Nature intended, she will come to 
value them more. 

Meanwhile, the sight of hundreds of staunch 
republican females buying themselves titles is not 



104 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

without humour. It is not without significance; 
just how many more would do the same, given 
the chance, is a relevant subject for inquiry. 

American women, by and large, are losing re- 
spect for their men. This seems to be nation- 
wide, and is perhaps the most interesting fact in 
all human relations. And the reason for it is 
unreal. The men are forceful and virile, they 
originate; yet they delight in proclaiming in- 
feriority, in grovelling, as it were, before the 
weaker sex, and the women are taking them at 
their own valuation. 

If Americans but knew it, they do their women 
an infinite wrong. In her heart, the true woman 
craves a mate stronger than herself, and nothing 
in this wide world can ever mean to her more. A 
strong man is more to her than dollars poured in 
her lap, than living her own life, than all those 
absurd social activities. But when the strong 
man comes not^only men who proclaim them- 
selves weak, her heart begins to atrophy. 

It has been quaintly said that woman is the 
last animal man will tame. I certainly believe 
her to live in a world of her own, and feel sure 
her mentality and man's progress along parallel 
lines and are never destined to meet. The man 
is much to the woman, but not for his mentality ; 
an observant man knows how hard — ^how nearly 



WOMEN 105 

impossible — it is to rivet a woman by his brains. 
His world is not hers, nor does it greatly interest 
her. He may talk well and forcibly, he may ring 
the changes on money-making, politics, travel, 
science, or art; he may draw polite attention or 
rapt gaze; but there is a something he cannot 
rivet, an impish inner-woman, whose mind is fly- 
ing from his moustache to the timbre of his voice, 
the colour of his eyes, the dresses of other women, 
the colour of their eyes, and to a thousand futile 
nothings — the very negation of intellect; and he 
will learn in time that there is one chord, and one 
only, that he must strike — sex — if he would cap- 
ture and hold her elusive soul. 

Weakness of the judicial function is strongly 
marked in women; they may talk well, but they 
seldom argue well, and rarely take advice. In 
my experience I have hardly known a woman, 
against her inclination, to be convinced by rea- 
soning; and it may be laid down (as interesting 
rather than sinister) that the sex is not open to 
this form of intercourse. 

There are three subjects about which one can 
talk — ^people, things, ideas — and the student of 
woman (I speak always of the average woman) 
will note that it is the first and least intellect- 
ual of these subjects — people — that she mostly 
choses. One may go further, and lay down that 
two women speaking together will discuss a third. 



106 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

To prove this, let the student walk in some popu- 
lous thoroughfare and listen — ^not vulgarly, but 
in the interest of psychology — to all pairs of 
females as they pass. If they are of the upper 
classes, ''So she said to me,'' are the words he is 
most likely to hear; if of the lower, "Says she to 
me/' will be wafted to him, 

"For the ColonePs lady and Judy O'Grady 
Are sisters under their skins." 

This tendency of women, to discuss other people 
and brood over their affairs, in preference to 
entering more fully into the great world of inter- 
esting things and sublime ideas, is deplorable. 
There is a quality of earthiness in the woman's 
mind; contrasted with her delicacy of face and 
form, it is one of the inscrutable things in nature. 

Woman is lacking in proportion. To man, 
her standard of values is philistine, her serious- 
ness over non-essentials a source of wonder. Tra- 
dition and dogma flow in her blood; she has put 
herself under priest or medicine-man of some sort 
since the world began. 

Of all things woman hates the abstract; her 
world is on the surface. Here, taken at random, 
is a stout lady in black silk, moving in the very 
best society. Do you think, for one moment, 
that she ponders the mystery of things, regards 
herself as other than fixed and ultimate? A pup- 



WOMEN 107 

pet on strings! A phantom built of electrons! 
A shadow in a shadow-show! Impious man! 
Impertinent and ridiculous scoffer! She dines 
with the Bishop to-night! 

Spiritualism, a result of indiscriminate educa- 
tion on half-baked minds, fed, too, by the hysteria 
which is in us all, is becoming rampant; but 
mostly women are drawn into the vortex. Women 
often tell you they commune with the dead, or 
live in the world of the occult, and probably those 
of the sex who are normal in outlook are now in 
the minority. There may, or may not be a spirit- 
world : intellectual minds look on the problem as 
not knowable ; but what we do see is a number of 
men, and a horde of women, accepting it on most 
ludicrous evidence. 

The most interesting phase in all this trend is 
the spread of Christian Science — ^by a woman. 
Mrs. Eddy held no patent for healing through the 
mind. She annexed it from a man-practitioner, 
who, in his turn, was using a healing force known 
for thousands of years. There is no doubt she 
took herself seriously; she was already self-hypno- 
tized ; and that is the precise condition into which 
her followers fall, who now number several mil- 
lions. Self-hypnotism, auto-suggestion, is the 
key to Christian Science, the one mental condition 
in which it can flourish; in the cold light of rea- 
son and intellect the fabric fades away. 



108 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

Mrs. Eddy, who had no education to speak of, 
wrote a bible. She named it ''Science and 
Health." I have tried to understand this book, 
to read a meaning into it, even as Mark Twain 
tried, but upon my honour it left me dazed and 
uncomprehending. The recurring theme of it, 
like a motiv in a Wagner opera, is that there is 
nothing but mind, that the material world we 
know, in the last analysis, does not exist, and that 
the All-Mind, which only exists, is God. I, who 
see this world as a Shadow Show, shall not deny 
its immateriality; but I don't let my reason run 
wild outside accepted Science. My reading of 
the riddle of life, and Mrs. Eddy's as shown in 
that fantastic book, are as the poles asunder. 

Well, Mrs. Eddy died; and although nothing 
mattered or existed except mind, she left two mil- 
lion dollars. She had made big money selling 
her bible; which each follower was expected to 
possess. I believe the cheapest edition of Mrs. 
Eddy's bible costs three dollars. A more stylish 
edition, which the sellers ''feature," costs five 
dollars. It is called a "Key to the Scripture,'* 
yet the Scriptures, in the shape of the New Testa- 
ment, may be bought anywhere for a few cents. 
As the chief healer commercialised Christian 
Science, so did her followers. There grew up a 
number of journeymen Scientists, mostly women, 
who took up mind-healing as a business. They 



WOMEN 109 

will treat you at your home, or concentrate on 
you at a distance, for cash down; and they do 
well at it. A novel idea, this treatment at a dis- 
tance. You are in the Waldorf-Astoria, let us 
say, with a diseased mind, and you call up a 
journeyman Scientist to concentrate on you from 
the Bronx. She may be genuine; she may not. 
You take pot luck, as it were ; you are souled and 
healed — at one dollar fifty an hour. 

Mrs. Eddy has a rival. Another woman has 
done well out of her own creed. Living in a 
great house outside Madras, Mrs. Besant, the 
high-priestess of Theosophy, is spending the eve- 
ning of her days. Her followers surround her 
not only with mystic rapture, but with great 
worldly comfort, and most evenings you wall see 
her taking the air in a superb Rolls-Royce. 

Understand me. If men and women down in 
their hearts are straight they may be Christian 
Scientists, Theosophists, anything they please. It 
is this commercialising of religion that I think so 
damnable ; there is no record of Jesus Christ using 
a cheque book, or of Buddha placing a lakh of 
rupees on fixed deposit. 

If you would reconcile widely differing opin- 
ions about women, go to the man of the world. 
He knows. He has dealt more intimately with 
women in his time than ever did Schopenhauer 



110 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

or Nietzsche, who denounced the sex, or than that 
wishy-washy class of men who laud women to 
about the eighth place of decimals. He will tell 
you that there are two opinions about women, be- 
cause there are two sorts of men to hold them. 

You will see two men standing together. One 
is a man who dominates women, who attracts 
them instantly, into whose arms, in his time, 
dozens of women have flung themselves in love 
and abandonment. The other, perhaps taller and 
finer looking, and as likely as not a more moral 
and scrupulous person, instinctively repels the 
opposite sex. Outwardly he stands there the 
sexual equal of the other. Yet no female glances 
are shot at him, no woman desires him in her 
heart, none has ever thought of him in the long 
watches of the night. 

How can these two men hold the same views 
about women? The first man knows. A hundred 
women have opened their souls to him. He can 
read most of them like a book. 

But the good, tall man does not know. In his 
eyes women are for ever unknowable, mysterious, 
creatures of a finer clay. The magnetic man de- 
fers to women; but he cringes to them — even in 
his thoughts he cringes — and so they think of him 
as of a docile dog. 

The two types will persist forever. Woman — 
deeply human woman — will put up the eternal 



WOMEN 111 

bluff, which the first man will reject, and the 
second will fall to; the first man will be bidden 
into the parlour of life, the second will sit and 
lick his chops in the antechamber. 

The man of forty, who has seen much of the 
world, has learned a deal about women. First 
of all, he finds it no drawback in women's eyes 
to be forty. He thinks more of them than when 
he was twenty-five, and is surprised to find women 
think more of him. He now appreciates them 
fully. He knows too the worldly value of stand- 
ing well in their estimation, and how easy this is 
to achieve. It is the small attentions to women, 
the tiniest courtesies, which yield the richest re- 
turn. 

On the more intimate side, he has learned 
things about women which are never given out 
from pulpits. The church's idea that they are 
shrinking lilies, forever seeking safety from man's 
desire, is seen to be false. They have desires of 
their own, and often don't hestitate to show them. 
In the real world, as opposed to the conventional, 
world, women seeks her mate just as man does. 
She has quite a clear idea which man she wants, 
and is able in the cunningest ways to bring the 
fact to his notice. 

On the whole, in our Western world, it is the 
woman who makes the advances, and in the in- 
terests of the unbom it is right that this should 



112 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

be. The man of forty, by this time gauging 
woman's reliance on her instincts, should never 
force his attentions. If he pleases, she will show, 
him so unmistakably. If he does not — it is waste 
of time to think about her. This is what young 
men never know. 

The established relations of the sexes will, I 
believe, continue through all woman's emancipa- 
tion. Man is man, and is meant to be strong. 
Woman is woman, and remains weak. No true 
woman chafes at her weakness — ^mental or other- 
wise. Her instinct is to seek out the very strength 
she lacks — to look up, to lean; in the virility of a 
fitting mate she has been destined by nature to 
find all her heart's desire. Weakness, inability to 
dominate her, is man's cardinal sin in a woman's 
eyes; the weak men of the world, and they are 
not a few, are woman's real tragedy. 

Woman strives for mastery, and is unhappy 
when it comes. She knows it is not her destiny. 
I will hold, in the face of the world, the happy 
woman to be she who can look up to and respect 
the man, and the ineffective man he to whom no 
woman looks up. There is just one way with a 
woman. Carry her in your arms, physically or 
mentally, and she is yours; but God help you if 
you can do neither. 



CHAPTER VI 

GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 

In this, our Shadow-Show, there is a land 
whose glamour has never faded, where men still 
walk as in a dream; it is a land where pipes are 
playing and distant drums throb ; where the shut- 
ters have ears; where crows cry at the dawn, the 
water-wheel creaks through the long day, and 
crickets sing the weary to sleep; where shadows 
pass in the breathless nights, and the dead are 
carried forth at noon. 

Jama Mas j id, the great mosque, lies sweltering 
in the heat. In its minaret, high over Delhi, I 
have sat alone these two hours. Spread out below 
me rests the imperial city, white, flat-roofed, 
crowded with life: the very heart and spirit of 
India. 

Down from the mosque a stately flight of steps 
leads to a commonage; cross this, and you are at 
the palace gates. Built in their not-to-be-mis- 
taken red sandstone, this is the old citadel of the 
Moguls. Below its ramparts the Jumna runs, 
bounding the city on this side; beyond the river, 

113 



1114 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

north and east, are the crop-laden plains of Oudh 
and the Punjab. 

Note well these palace ramparts of Delhi ; they 
have seen the making of history. They have seen 
strange things — ^marble floors splashed with blood, 
impious hands dragging at a peacock throne — 
and what do they not know of intrigue, of im- 
perial caprice, of whispered words to the eunuchs, 
of moonless nights, and of erstwhile gunny-bags, 
bulging with their loads, sent hurtling into the 
muddy waters. 

Beyond the city walls, towards the south, the 
vista is of rolling, untilled country, ruins, old 
tombs, and mosques. Two miles out stands the 
citadel of Firoz, builder of an earlier Delhi. 
Those farther ruins, this being no city of yester- 
day, mark her site a thousand years ago. That 
stately dome, rising in the distance among lesser 
domes, is the tomb of Humayun, father of great 
Akbar. Thither, after the siege in 1857, fled the 
young princes of Delhi, the nuclei, the rally- 
points of the Mogul tradition. Here Hodson, 
riding out with a patrol, took them captive, and 
by the roadside, fearing a rescue, shot them down 
with his own hand; this in the presence of many 
natives. 

Poor Hodson ! there are flabby people who call 
him murderer. When omelettes shall be made 
without breaking eggs, we may essay to run our 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 115 

Empire in kid gloves; till then, his act must be 
written down as strong and far-sighted. 

That tower on the ridge, beyond the city, is 
the Mutiny Memorial — a hideous thing, degrad- 
ing to good taste. And in India — at Delhi of 
all places! Look south, you British philistines! 
Against the horizon stands Kutub Minar; yet 
in presence of architectural majesty, you have 
dared assert the style of your provincial town 
halls. Or come with me to Rajputana; mount 
this ancient elephant, and let us ascend the 
heights of Chitoor. In broad daylight I shall 
show you a Tower of Victory such as your dreams 
never imagined. 

It is now past midday, and a Friday. The 
mosque is filling. As they enter the great court- 
yard, the Faithful repair to the central tank foB 
ablution; this ended, with turban and sandals 
adjusted, they press forward towards the canopy. 
After one o'clock, when the multitude is on its 
knees, the chanting of the ulema is heard, and 
shouts of "Allah !" rise from a thousand throats. 
The sun beats fiercely down, but in God's fresh 
air the worshippers heed not ; in serried rows they 
sway to and fro, their foreheads press the flags. 

In the Mahometan world of old, when religion 
absorbed men's lives, holiness, actual or reputed, 
stood for power and social prestige ; it was a com- 
modity, a great asset. 



116 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

And as asset, what trade in it did they drive? 
Were these old saints innately virtuous, or did 
the ablest men of the time ply saintship as a 
profession? When a family could specialize in 
holiness for generations, for centuries, and be- 
come, withal, great and powerful, the more 
worldly or professional view of saintship would 
seem established. 

Here, in India, flourished for centuries the 
Chishti family of saints, rising to fame not only 
in their own line, but as lawgivers and the friends 
of kings ; their graves cover India. 

Dying in 1324, Nixam-ud-din Aulia, of the 
Chishtis, lies amid that congeries of royal tombs 
to the south of Delhi, a still venerated grave, 
while the princely sleepers around him are for- 
gotten. 

Two hundred and fifty years later the Sheikh 
Salim Chrishti, grandson of the saint Farid-ud- 
din, dwelt, a hermit, in a cave some twenty miles 
from Agra. For love and veneration of this man 
— this professional saint, if our diagnosis be cor- 
rect — the great Akbar built around his cave a 
city, and dwelt there. And this famous city of 
red sandstone, with its carved palaces, was Fateh- 
pur Sikri. 

But this was misplaced zeal, which Akbar lived 
to repent. Here was a city wanting water; but 
there was no water, and the saint could cause no 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 117 

gushing from the rock. On the head of drought 
there came pestilence, then, saint or no saint, the 
city was doomed. 

So, on a morning, the Emperor and his court 
returned to Agra, and a beauteous and brand new 
town was turned over to the jackals. Deserted 
it stood, as it stands to-day, in splendid silence. 
Time has dealt gently with Fatehpur Sikri. Akbar 
departed over three hundred years ago, yet lay 
on water, and Maple's would give you entrance 
within the week. No cave is now to be seen, but 
in the courtyard of the great mosque, behind 
carved screens of marble, rests the shrine of Sheikh 
Salim. To this shrine many pilgrims repair. 
Childless women, Mahometan and Hindu, seek it 
out, interceding, in the words of our rubric, for 
a "happy issue" out of all their aiBictions. 

The grandson of Sheikh Salim, it is written, 
became Governor of Bengal; but no later saints 
are reported in the Chishti annals. The family's 
prestige, and its specialied faculty, would not 
seem to have survived the disaster of Fatehpur 
Sikri. 

What of the Hindu world of India — those two 
hundred millions — those Brahmins, Rajputs, 
Vaisyas, Sikhs, Jains, and Mahrattas, whose tem- 
ples and palaces cover the land? What indeed is 



118 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

Hinduism; can one man of these millions tell? 
A religion? A fetish? 

In the beginning, Brahma sat on his throne — 
the Permeating Essence, the All-Pervading in 
Nature — a fine conception, to be worshipped in 
singleness of heart. Then some metaphysician, 
some Hindu Athanasius, pondered, and behold! 
the Trinity — Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva (yet not 
three Brahmas, but one Brahma) — an entity for 
everaiore. 

Ensued the gradual decay, the running to seed, 
of Brahmanism. On the back of the god, as time 
went on, a whole mythology- came into being. 
Vishnu they credited with nine incarnations — as 
a tortoise, a bear, a dwarf; while the quaint vatic- 
inations of the god-beasts, the elusive and indeli- 
cate manifestations of Shiva, the vagaries of 
Saraswati, wife of Brahma, astride her peacock, 
and a hundred other fantastic myths, show to 
what depths the conception of the Divine Essence 
gradually sank. 

To-day, in the temples of Hindustan, the 
Brahmin caste babbles to images, and before pot- 
bellied idols the millions fall prostrate. From 
the recesses of the priests wricked faces look out, 
and the air is heavy with a feeling of corruption. 
In the great temples of Trichinopoly garlanded 
cows moved to and fro; in the fanatic eyes of the 
priests I read myself inferior to these ruminants. 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 119 

In another temple monkeys surrounded me; fat- 
tened on the tenets of Hanuman, they longed for 
the order to tear me in pieces. 

But nothing is all bad; there is a human side 
even to Hinduism. Animal life is venerated, the 
mild-tempered Jain stepping aside to oblige even 
an ant. The bodies of the dead are burned (I 
have watched the fires flare by night at Benares), 
and the ashes scattered to the winds or consigned 
to the sacred river. There is no slow festering 
of the dead in the ground, no choosing of leaden 
coflSns by old ladies, to whom the resurrection 
looms more physical than mystic, no dropping of 
morsels from the gorged throats of vultures, as 
at Bombay. The burial rites of the Hindu must 
indeed become our own. 

And to Hinduism we owe a great architecture. 
Each cycle furnished its masterpieces — the rock 
caves, with their rich and original figuring, the 
great Dravidian temples in the south, the temples 
of Mysore, Gwalior, fortess of the Mahrattas, 
Amber, and the palaces of Rajputana, and golden- 
templed Amritsar, of the Sikhs. Lastly, note the 
small sect of Jains, building at Chitoor that tower 
aforesaid, and at Abu, in the hills, a temple of 
white marble whose glory will never die. I 
thought to write down the Jains as the Wesleyans 
of Hinduism, for in each is seen a revolt against 
sacerdotalism, a return to simpler forms. But 



120 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

when I saw Chitoor and Abu, comparison was 
dead. To liken these princes of architecture to 
the men who can design Methodist chapels must 
be forever impossible. 

Over the desert from Abu a camel track leads 
to Udaipur, most picturesque spot in India. This 
city lives, surely, to glorify one man. The gay 
turbaned throng seem there but to yield him 
revenue. The narrow streets clear as his elephant 
train makes for the royal stables. His vast palace 
and its gardens blot out the landscape. Behind 
the grated windows of its harem dwell the loveli- 
est women in the, land, and on its fairy-like lake 
none but his rowers may ply to and from the 
pavilioned islands. All is his! 

"Less than the dust beneath thy chariot-wheel/' 
I sang out, as might sing, on the house-tops of 
this city, some love-sick maid, some Rajput Lady 
of Shalott. "Less than the dust . . .'' With its 
escort of horsemen the chariot itself flashed by, 
and presently, at the palace gates, the retainers 
bowed them to the ground. 

This black- whiskered bejewelled prince, Ma- 
harajah of Udaipur, has the bluest blood in India 
to-day, a strain from the old Kings of Oudh. In 
olden times, I have been told, another prince of 
Raj pu tana, great of birth and prestige, was as 
the sun of Udaipur's moon. This Sun, impover- 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 121 

ished, and casting about him for some lakhs, came 
to Udaipur's palace, where that chief did him 
honour, and when, lying on their divans, the Sun 
graciously offered his water-pipe, Udaipur's satis- 
faction was not to be hid. 

After some time they met again. WTien the 
salaams had been spoken, Udaipur said, ''Mahara- 
jah, wilt thou now repay me those lakhs?" Then 
slowly the Sun raised his eyes, "Repay thee lakhs! 
Didst thou not draw at my hookah?" 

The Maharajah of Udaipur bowed his head. 

Chains of white mountains encompass Kash- 
mir. Their peaks, pure but sterile, merge under 
the line of perpetual snow into fir forests. Below 
these are the barren uplands, and so we descend 
to that strip of eighty miles by twenty, the valley 
itself. Through this valley, rising at the Tibetan 
end, meanders the Jehlum River, with its lakes 
and waterways. Green meadows, stretching mile 
upon mile, line the banks. That row of poplars 
denotes some boundary. Here is a village with 
its orchards. Sheep are feeding on the meadows, 
and a flock of geese pushes off into mid-stream. 

Is this Kashmir? It might be Northern France, 
and those sheep potential pre sales. It might be 
Holland. 

But the sun is setting, and under an apple- 
tree on the grass white figures kneel, their faces 



m THE SHADOW-SHOW 

Meccawards. It is Central Asia after all ; tonight 
Allah, Answerer of Prayer, will hold Kashmir in 
His keeping. 

This is mid-April, spring-time, and though the 
rain may fall, the sap is fast rising. The grass 
is emerald green, and the poplars and planes 
burst from bud to leaf in a night. Wild flowers 
will bloom later on the hill-side, but a red-and- 
white crocus is coming up, and where meadows 
verge on the swamps beds of iris are blooming. 
The many orchards are in flower — white and 
pink; and when, of a sudden, you catch almond 
blossom against the distant snows, you have 
caught the spirit of this spring. 

Tugged by four swarthy fellows, and preced- 
ing the mat-shaded doonga of the domestics, the 
little houseboat came in due time to Srinagar. 
Punting up the main highway of this straggling, 
dilapidated city, we passed the palace of the Ma- 
harajah, and drew into the shady Chenar Bagh. 

From open windows, as we passed, the keen 
eyes of curio merchants had summed us up, and 
now, laden with wares, their canoes were con- 
verging from all points. Set out on our decks 
were embroideries, damascenes, and carvings, such 
as only Kashmir can show, silver wares of Tibetan 
pattern, reliquaries from beyond the mountains, 
matrix turquoise from Ladakh and Persia, old 
tapestry of Bokhara — the presentment in excelsis 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 123 

of the curio. Lying there in the Chenar Bagh, 
those astute Kashmiri salesmen marked me as 
their prey, and I fell horribly. 

On a day, the houseboat lying thus moored, 
there happened the festival of Moy Shareef, a 
personage in the Sunni or Orthodox hierarchy. 
This was held at the Mosque of Hazart Bal, on 
the shores of the Dal lake, a league from Srinagar. 
The mosque, reputed to contain a hair from the 
Prophet's beard, was of Kashmiri type — a bastard 
pagoda; red tulips, blossoming on the grass-grown 
roof, relieved its dull lines. 

Outside the edifice a vast crowd waited. At 
three in the afternoon the service culminated, and 
some eighty thousand of the Faithful, their vigil 
over, spread through adjacent orchards and under 
the old chenar-trees that here line the lake shore. 
A multitude, taking to boats of every description, 
put out on the lake. 

As our canoe threaded its way among a thou- 
stand craft, I saw that many who sat therein were 
drinking tea. Others listened to the distant music 
of pipes, while boatloads of professional singers, 
moving through the crowd, gave delight to those 
who listened. Here and there, with eyes intent 
on some wealthy merchant, courtesans reclined on 
cushioned barges. They were very beautiful in- 
deed. Shades of Fadladeen ! and of Moy Shareef, 
shades ! This was no place for rich elderly men. 



124 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

As the day waned our rowers brought us past 
the Shalimar to Nishat Bagh, on the further shore, 
the garden pleasaunce of some old king. In the 
gloaming we passed the floating gardens of the 
Dal, bright with beds of mustard and with fruit 
blossom, and in the darkness were rowed into the 
city. 

All that night crowded boats from the lake 
passed down the Chenar Bagh, and to me, lying 
abed in the houseboat, came fragments of music 
and song and laughter. It was festival night in 
the Happy Valley. 

Sailing south from Bombay, some hundreds of 
miles, the traveller will come to Goa of the Portu- 
guese, and its small town of Panjim. 

This futile little place, exporting coco-nuts, 
with a side-line in cabin stewards, has a history. 
Four hundred years ago Portugal took it. By 
the middle of the sixteenth century it was a city 
of 200,000 souls, the richest in India. Great 
merchants owned its warehouses. Great men 
walked its streets; Albuquerque and Vasco da 
Gama were among its viceroys, Camoens knew 
it, he who was to become St. Francis Xavier lived 
here. Goa was early a famous headquarters of the 
Jesuits; from their college missionaries set forth 
for Malacca, for China, for Paraguay. As a re- 
ligious centre Goa's fame kept growing; it became 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 125 

the see of an archbishop, and convents of the 
Dominicans and the Carmelites were built. In 
1560 the Inquisition was set up, and the proces- 
sions for the autos'da-fe were seen daily. For the 
good of their souls, eleven thousand were put to 
death in this corner of India. 

Ravaged by pestilence, by raids from the in- 
terior, and by the attacks of the Dutch, the glory 
of Goa faded as it had come. To-day the city 
does not even exist. Coco-nut groves cover the 
ruins of its streets, and where the palace of the 
Inquisition had stood native children were play- 
ing tipcat. Still standing, well cared for, are some 
half-dozen fine old churches; these, with a con- 
vent, and the dwellings of the clergy, are all that 
remain of Old Goa. 

In the church of "The Good Jesus," in richly 
wrought silver coffin, rests the embalmed body of 
St. Francis Xavier. It is the glory of Goa, and 
is exposed to view perhaps once in a decade, at 
some high religious festival. At a certain ex- 
posure, among a crowd of devotees, a Portuguese 
countess pressed forward, and in the act of devo- 
tion bit off the saint's toe. Thinking to escape 
with the relic in her mouth, she rose from her 
knees, but keen eyes had observed the act; as a 
priestly hand closed on her gullet, the oesophagus 
disgorged its trophy. 

Another relic of Portugal in the East is the 



128 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

island of Magao. This little spot, south of Hong- 
Kong, just clear of the mainland, is perhaps two 
miles long. In a garden of Magao, three hundred 
and fifty years ago, a Government official sat each 
afternoon writing, and one day appeared — the 
"Lusiad." Thus did Camoens, Shakespeare of 
Portugal, bring fame to Magao. I sat in the old 
garden, with its high walls, one evening as the day 
faded. The bust of the poet peered at me through 
the bloom. 

To-day, Chinese have overrun the island ; smug- 
glers and opium-runners make it their headquar- 
ters. It is a gambling centre, thither resorting 
wealthy Chinamen from Hong-Kong, Canton, and 
Amoy, and one may spend a night round the 
tables, travelling from house to house. The game 
played is fan-tan^ and the stakes of foreigners, 
who sit in upper chambers looking down on the 
tables, are raised and lowered in tiny baskets. As 
these baskets of Mexican dollars went up and 
down, I thought of that biblical lowering of a 
basket, from the walls of Jericho, and cast my 
eyes around for prototype of her who had low- 
ered it. 

It is daybreak on the Shan Hills — that lonely 
stretch of country on the outer fringe of Burma 
— daybreak, and a white man steps from his tent. 
The huts of a Kuchin village cluster round him. 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 127 

Outside these, in the grey dawn, stand muscular 
young women at the hulling of rice ; little hissing 
sounds come from them as the wooden pestles 
strike truly home. Old hags, too, weeders of the 
grain and pumpkin patches, are moving afield, but 
one and all, old and young, are hugely goitrous, 
and the eyes of the young man are turned sadly 
away. 

The village lies on a mountain slope, at 4,000 
feet, and now, in the broad daylight, there unfolds 
a panorama of half the Shan States. What a 
forest! When the mists rise from the valleys it 
will be seen stretching to China. 

To this mountain, which they called the "Ele- 
phant's Neck," Chinese had come in days gone 
by, to work silver ores. Here, and at Baudwen, 
thirty miles to the south, they set up little mining 
republics, built smelters, cleared the forest for 
charcoal and prospered for m^any years. Old 
legends speak of the ''great silver mines between 
Pekin and Mandalav," but as to the date of their 
greatness, who shall guess? Baudwen must be 
two hundred years old; it may be five hundred 
years. Stone dragons, crouching before its ruined 
temple, when adjured to state their age, vouch- 
safed no clue. 

Mg Ho Tchwang, the "Elephant's Neck," was 
wrapped in mystery yet more dense. Tradition, 
among the scattered villages, placed the departure 



128 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

of the last Chinese about 1840; but what they had 
worked, what left behind, was hidden by the 
dense undergrowth. 

Hence, for solution of these things, came this 
white man — these two men — climbing to the vil- 
lage with pack mules, twelve jungle cutters, a 
tent, and no little enthusiasm. 

What they sought they found ; but those tracks 
hewn through the bamboos, those lead slags lying 
on the mountain-side, those old mine workings, 
unsafe for penetration — these things are pigeon- 
holed in London offices, and concern this story not 
at all. 

The hamlet of Weng Pat, on the further side 
of the mountain, lay stricken with malaria. One 
midday, as the two men passed from the country, 
they rested under its great tree, while word of 
the bitter white drug they carried passed from 
house to house. A deputation met them under 
the tree; it was gratified when a small stock of 
quinine, with instructions for use, was placed in 
the poongye's hands. 

This courtesy to Buddhism, in the person of a 
fever-stricken old priest, met its reward. Two 
nights later, drenched, their mules astray, the 
travellers reached a village. "White guests," 
cried its headman; ''where should they sleep but 
in our little temple?" So in a trice they lay, 
naked and dry, on its clean floor; and later, when 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 129 

the mules came in, mattresses were stretched on 
the very platfomi beside the gods. In the watches 
of that night he who writes awoke. Resting on 
him, luminous in the darkness, was the divine 
gaze of the Buddha. 

As our little caravan passed from hill to hill 
we sickened of malaria — we, our Chinese drivers, 
our Indian servants, our very mules. There came 
a night, on the China frontier, when I lay in a 
hut and — waited. About nine, my companion laid 
the thermometer under my tongue; it said 106^ — 
rising fast ! He forced some sweetish liquid into 
my mouth ; his voice was a mile away, but I heard 
him saying, ''You must keep this downr I 
thought I might be dying . . . but thirty-six 
seemed too young . . . then it was broad day- 
light, and my temperature down to 95°. I tested 
my vitality that day by walking twenty miles. 
It held, and for three days more; it carried us 
down to the plains, and into Bhamo. 

Lying then at ease on the deck of a river 
steamer, I sailed for a week down the Irrawadi 
— down past the wooded defiles, where monkeys 
peered from the high crags; past Sagaing, with 
its tombs of the old dynasty; past Mandalay, city 
of the lotus, with the cloistered Arrakan and the 
palace of deposed Thebaw; past the thousand- 
year-old ruins of Pagan ; down into Lower Burma, 
where multitudes were at work in the paddy- 



130 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

fields ; past Prome, and finally to the city of Ran- 
goon, where Shwe Dagon towers — the Golden 
Pagoda. Standing at its base, on a night of high 
festival, I saw that blaze of colour and of gaud 
that the Orient itself can nowhere match. 

There are calm, stately townships near the 
equator. White-clad Europeans traverse their 
shady allees^ and the air is of old-world repose. 
There is closure of shop and office at midday, the 
gorging of the reistafel^ slumber through long 
tropic afternoons, a harnessing of mincing pony 
stallions, and the driving out of stout couples to- 
ward eventide. 

This is Java under the Dutch — Java, shady and 
beautiful, where the mild-tempered native gives 
no trouble, hard work is barely known, and life 
passes sleepily and easily. 

Yet the Dutch know their business. A climatic 
lethargy grips them, but there is no slovenliness. 
Their government is sound, contenting the abori- 
gines, their railways progressive, their hotels ex- 
cellent, their houses spacious and graceful; the 
lawns of Haarlem and Utrecht are not more trim 
than their gardens. 

The Dutch have made a real success in Java. 
Finding an island rich and apt, they have fash- 
ioned a first-rate colony. The soil is of the best, 
and the contours set no limit to irrigation. Water 
in never- failing supply makes their task easy, and 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 131 

Java the last word in tropical culture. The 
Javanese, swarming, yet adaptable, and very 
cleanly, are the happiest of the world's peoples. 

To the Anglo-Indian, Java must carry the les- 
son of content. Here is no feverish hastening on 
European leave, no eternal girding at the heat, no 
undue cursing of natives, no God-damning of the 
condition of things. The Dutchman, more or less, 
goes to Java for life; he settles down, builds a 
graceful house, lays out a charming garden — ^his 
children are taught to call it home. 

In often taking to wife a woman of the country 
he errs; not in himself perhaps, but towards the 
children who come after. This crossing of the 
strain is not a matter of bulbs, not a hybridizing 
of tulips — it is a mistake, the blot on Java. Yet 
the large half-caste population lives seemingly 
under no social ban. At school the children mix; 
when the band plays the eyes of white maidens 
ogle dusky youths; at the social clubs the castes 
come together with no undue reserve. 

Take note of thees things, Eurasians of India! 
You, Honorary Lieutenant Castries, and that 
family we know, take note! There is sanctuary 
in Java for sallow complexions. 

And these Dutch women of the true blood — 
how robust their outline ! What a genuine plump- 
ness ! Yet — are the men of Holland blind to the 
finer shades? The ''fault of the Dutch" has long 



132 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

been notorious; their liking for "too much" would 
seem to have evolved the fattest women in Chris- 
tendom. 

In the interior of the island are sights not to 
be overlooked. There is Buitenzorg, among the 
wooded hills, world-famed for beauty, and Soeka- 
boemi, the Cheltenham of Java. Here, on cool 
uplands, dwell retired Dutchmen of leisure, civil 
servants on their pensions, and well-to-do half- 
castes. Their gardens are a delight to the eye. 
From the upland town of Garoet I drove through 
the tilled rice-fields, through groves of bamboo 
and coco-nut, to Lake Bagendit, and stood there 
enraptured. The air was fresh and cool after 
heavy rain, a zephyr whispered on the water, the 
mist was lifting from green forests and from 
mountains ; on the horizon a volcano smoked. 

An orchestra of young musicians, with instru- 
ments of bamboo, had approached unseen, and 
was squatted ; the peace of God descended on me 
to a minor repetitive. 

In the gloaming I left Bagendit, bestowing on 
the musicians a largesse of one guelder; the bam- 
boos throbbed a furious farewell. 

The Javanese in religion are mildly Mahom- 
etan. In art they are as children. Digest these 
facts; then travel, as I did, to Djockja, and view 
strange ruins, Buddhist and Hindu, gigantic, of 
the first order in architecture and sculpture. These 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 133 

are surely Indian in origin, the outcome of colossal 
religious propaganda; their date would seem to 
go back a thousand years. 

One may picture these remote events : the com- 
ing of the princes and priests from Hindustan, the 
fine frenzy of the proselytes, the conceptions tak- 
ing form, the voyaging to and fro of architects, of 
stonemasons, the steady rising of the fanes, pre- 
dictions, by many, of the golden age of Java; great 
events these, in their day, pregnant, nevertheless, 
with the mutability that is in all things. 

What of our own great affairs a thousand years 
hence — massacres of Jews, of Christians, encycli- 
cals of an infallible Papacy, Welsh revivals, 
Eucharist congresses, the consistency of a wafer, 
the cut of a reredos, the passing over of neurotic 
spinsters to Rome? Verily, these things will show 
in truer perspective. 

To-day these great Indian ruins of Java stand 
desolate among rice-fields. Buddhist and Hindu 
are there extinct as the dodo. 

'Tn the red bamboo forest, down by the shrine 
of the goddess Kwannon. . . .'' 

I sat in His Majesty's Theatre, in London, and 
watched the ''Darling of the Gods.'' Night after 
night, from that strange cry in the prologue, until 
the death chant of the Samurai by the forest 



134 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

shrine, the sights and sounds of this play thrilled 
me. In truth, they sent me to Japan. 

On the morning appointed, with Honolulu 
twelve days astern, a high coast-line rose from 
out the sea — ^bleak hills, sparely crested with firs ; 
five hours later we steamed into Yokohama Bay, 
and I set foot in Japan. It was early April and 
the cherry-trees in fullest bloom. There were hun- 
dreds of these trees; for joy I could have knelt to 
them. 

That afternoon, taking train, I went down the 
peninsula to Kamakura, A rickshaw drew me 
thence to where, in a grove of the flowering cher- 
ries, his eyes closed in fathomless contemplation, 
sits that great figure of the Buddha. 

Before him I stood, lost in long reverie. What 
repose lay in those eyelids! What wisdom in 
that brain ! How many centuries had rolled over 
him ! And that this profound personality should 
be a bronze casting — it was unthinkable ! 

I crossed, and stood on the rising ground among 
foliage. Beyond this grove were orchards and 
gardens; an old temple stood on a hill, firs, bent 
and fantastic with age, outlined its horizon. The 
air was full of the spring. Near me a red camellia 
drew the eye to its thousand blossoms. A cloud 
passed from the sun, and the white mass of cher- 
ries began to sparkle. Under this canopy of 
bloom, divinely suffered by the Daibutsu^ a hun- 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 135 

dred children played happily. Down the valley 
there was a glimpse of the seashore. 

. . . That hour at Kamakura will always be 
mine, for I had grasped a country's soul. I had 
gone forward. Yesterday I had been — what? A 
bridge-player on the Pacific. Yesterday ! — ere my 
train reached Yokohama that evening I had been 
in Japan a hundred years. 

Journeying to Tokio, I lived at a native inn, 
and so passed, by hill and dale, over much of 
Japan. I saw those things that had fired the 
imagination — the ''red bamboo forest,'' "'the 
shrine of the goddess Kwannon," ''the Bay of 
Monkeys by the Inland Sea." I viewed Fuji- 
yama from Lake Hakone, fed the deer at Nara 
and on the sacred island of Myajima, walked in 
the crj^ptomeria forest at Nikko, and in blinding 
rain reached the hill-tops above Ikao. I saw the 
camellia, the cherry, the wild azalea, and the iris 
bloom. I lived through days, through weeks, of 
heavy rain, without which there had been no glory 
of tree and flower, no vivid freshness of early 
morning. 

The Japan of these things — of forests and blos- 
soms and running water — does not fail one. There 
the idea is safe. But this is no land of glamour, 
no India. Over-population is driving this people 
with a goad. With poverty ever near, their dili- 
gence excels that of all others. Every foot of their 



136 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

fields — every shoot — is tended by hand. To 
fertilize, they use liquid manure, and from each 
house by the rice-land comes the stench of a cess- 
pool. This is nasty, but in the way of nature. 
The advance to a materialism, to the slavery we 
call "manufacturing,'' is a worse thing by far. 
The smoke-stacks of Tokio and Osaka keep rising; 
the ugly commercial era has dawned that is to 
drive out beauty and joy. 

A coolie, a factory hand — for what will he 
count in this new Japan? As I pondered these 
things a coal-mine of the great Mitsui family was 
flooded. Not knowing, I came to that island in Na- 
gasaki harbour, and would have descended. ''You 
cannot go to-day,'' said one in authority; "a hun- 
dred of the drowned have not been recovered." 

Listen! At night, in a lull of the rain, there 
is a tapping along the empty streets. It is a 
blind masseur, recommending himself to the peo- 
ple. Poor devil! Ushered to the door of my 
room, how humbly he crawls forward; and yet 
cheerful withal, a master of his craft. A yen is 
not wasted here, if his poor face but lights to its 
touch. Ama San! what with your crawling in, 
and your crawling out, my eyes are wet. 

The scene changes, but not the note. This is 
Canton, greatest city of China. Within its walls 
is uttermost congestion of human beings; pushed 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 137 

into the very river, a quarter of a million dwell 
in boats. Its streets are alley-ways, where no sun 
enters; they exude filth, yet in their fetid air a 
multitude lives and moves. Here is a prison yard ; 
it, even, is crowded to the gates; to-morrow the 
headsman relieves the pressure, but it will only be 
for a few hours. In this warm, moist clime 
humanity spawn riotously, wriggles its day, and 
dies. What is its t:ile to date? I know not; but 
around the city, over hill and dale, the graves 
extend for seven miles. ' 

Wherefore, then, O God, this monstrous spawn- 
ing? Wherefore this fecundity of female Can- 
tonese? For how many of these millions, of the 
millions yet to be born, will filth, hunger, and 
crime, disease, and misery be the certain lot? 

The traveller, returning to Hong-Kong, cried 
a truce to these vital speculations; he surrendered 
to the eating of young ginger. Satiated, we next 
see him sailing up the Yangtse, six hundred miles, 
to Hankow. There, taking note of its million 
people, of its Chicago-like location, of much coal 
and iron in the hinterland, of the converging upon 
it of the railways, he made prediction. With clear 
eyes he saw this city a century hence; he saw it 
a world-centre, the commercial pivot of all the 
East. Hankow is indeed a city to be watched. 

In the harvest-time he crossed the plains of 
Honan. The grain was bounteous, and as the 



138 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

villagers cut and stacked they sang and made 
merry. At the inn of some small town the land- 
lord, his family and his domestics would crowd 
smiling round such unwonted guest, thinking to 
please his palate by the presentment of nauseous 
titbits. And this, readers of ''Yellow Peril" lit- 
erature, is a lonely Chinese inn of the interior! 
Indigestion, certainly, but not death nor danger 
lurked within its walls. 

One day an event occurred still notable in local 
annals, namely, the scattering of ''cash" to the 
children of the village. Of these trivial coins 
some forty go to the penny, and it is here recorded 
that the foreigner appeared at the place of scat- 
tering carrying thirty thousand. As the handfuls 
were thrown, and ere they reached the earth, four- 
score children, delirious with joy, closed on them. 
For an hour the air was black with copper spray, 
and there was dust and flying pigtails, joy, strug- 
gling, and excitement, such as come together once 
in a lifetime. At a certain stake two aged beggars 
of the village 'entered the melee. They were car- 
ried out presently, bruised and bleeding, whimper- 
ing, their wits gone; their begging-bowls lay in 
atoms ; grasped in their skinny fingers was the sum 
of nearly three farthings. 

The small steamer of a Chinaman, running 
from Chefoo, used to cross the Gulf of Pechili 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 139 

nightly. At daybreak one morning, after such 
crossing, I stepped from her cabin. I was swathed 
to the eyes, for it was mid-winter, but the sky was 
clear, there was no wind, the sea was as glass. 

A mile ahead lay the entrance to Port Arthur. 
This unique opening looked to be little more than 
a hundred yards wide, a mere slit in the range 
of hills fronting the coast. Over the crest of these 
hills muzzles of big guns pointed, and the figures 
of a sentry or two, some flags, and a semaphore, 
showed against the skyline. In the offing, on the 
glassy sea, rode half a dozen Russian warships; 
as we steamed through the channel, and passed 
to the inner harbour, fifteen in all were to be 
counted. 

This basin among the hills was bleak and ugly. 
On the right lay the naval dockyard, the strag- 
gling Chinese town, the lines of barracks. On 
the left, some two mxiles distant, lay the unfinished 
Russian town; on the rise above stood a half-built 
cathedral. 

The place bristled with soldiers; whole bat- 
talions were drilling on the heights. The narrow 
streets of the old town were blocked with trans- 
port trains. As usual, Chinese were doing the. 
hard work. Fur-clad, these adaptable creatures 
had already acquired Russian, and were now being 
roundl)^ abused in that tongue. They coaxed 
frightened mules, set up overturned sleighs, shifted 



140 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

masses of metal and timber, and did the general 
dirty work of Port Arthur that day, whilst some 
dozens of Russian officers, a young Scotsman, and 
an indeterminable riff-raff looked casually on. 

Round the palace of Alexieff, Russian Vice- 
roy, was great coming and going of military, with 
the war rumours fiercer than ever. Japan, threat- 
ening for years, Japan just over the straits there, 
was surely on the eve of action at last. It was 
touch and go. 

That evening, at an eating-house, I heard the 
situation had taken a turn, that the outlook was 
better; the naval officers were on shore, too, where 
they had not been for a week. 

But in the night sinister news must have come 
through. When morning dawned the fleet seemed 
all drawn to the inner harbour; the funnels were 
belching out dense black smoke, the decks were 
cleared for action. As my train steamed out for 
the North the sky was overcast, the town and 
harbour hidden in smoke. I thought it at the 
time an augury of evil. I was not wrong; two 
weeks later four of those warships had been 
pierced by torpedoes, and the investment of Port 
Arthur had begun. 

I passed on to Dalny, where Russia spent thosQ 
millions on a commercial port for the Siberian 
Railway; then to Harbin, in the heart of Man- 
churia. Harbin, central point in a food-producing 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 141 

area, will have a future. Several big flour-mills 
had even then been erected, and ice-bound in the 
Sungari, lay a small fleet of river steamers. As I 
stood at the confines of the town a cart approached 
over the snow-covered plain. This was guided by 
two Chinamen, drawn by a superb mule, and piled 
high with dead pheasants. There must have been 
four hundred. It was borne to the mind that 
Manchuria is this bird's home; but the "how" and 
the "whence" of this fine bag lay behind two 
inscrutable physiognomies. 

At Vladivostok the political news was vague, 
but there was again notable congestion of mili- 
tary. Four cruisers lay frozen hard in the harbour ; 
the contortions, in their interests, of a powerful 
ice-breaker enlivened the Sabbath afternoon. 

Four hundred miles north of Vladivostok, 
joined thereto by rail, is Khabarovsk. This Cos- 
sack town and strong military outpost owes its 
being to Amursky, he who seized for Russia her 
trans-Baikal Empire. On a cliff he stands there, 
hewn in stone, gazing down the great river which 
gave him his name. 

A two-horsed sledge drew out from Khabarovsk 
at a gallop, and passed up the frozen Amur. A 
journey of 2,200 miles stretched before it — a 
journey that was to last nineteen long days and 
nights. 

Lying in hay, under a felt blanket, I staved off 



142 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

the great cold, while felt boots that came above 
the knee, furs that covered body, head and ears, 
and thick fingerless gloves, gave real immunity. 
There was food, too, on board; white chunks of 
ice, that I knew for milk, brown chunks, denot- 
ing soup, a sack of bread, and some dozens of 
roasted rebchicks. Brick-tea and cakes had not 
been forgotten. 

At twilight after a three hours' gallop, a cluster 
of huts come into view. This is a Cossack settle- 
ment and posting station. Driver and shaggy 
Tartar ponies are changed, the modest tariff is 
paid, the sledge takes again to the river and to 
the darkness. At the next station, reached towards 
nine o'clock, supper is decided on. A peasant, 
taking up a hatchet, retires with the soup to an 
inner chamber, and presently there emerges a 
steaming tschi. Then once miore into the starry 
night. 

By morning the seventh stage has been reached. 
Khabarovsk lies eighty miles behind. The ice is 
rough, at times heaped up and impassable; the 
sledge, seeking a clear way, diverges to right and 
left, now into Siberia, now Manchuria. 

So we travelled, for five days and nights, nor 
did I close my eyes. On the sixth day a sleepless 
wreck, I came to the town of Blagoveschensk. A 
guest in the house of her richest man, I ascended 
to my room and slept heavily. 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 14S 

To me, having slumbered six hours, entered an 
awakening handmaiden. She bore a tumbler of 
Roederer. The Governor-General of the Amur 
Territory was supping below, and would I not 
come down ? Convivial sounds, and a clinking of 
glasses, indicated the entertainment as under way. 

The champagne worked wonders. I rose and 
went down. Supper was over, but, after introduc- 
tions, I fell on the remains of what had been a 
princely repast. Wine flowed freely, and toasts 
were being given; I was asked for mine. I said, 
"'Gentlemen — Excellency — I will give you a 
toast: 'Vive VArnurl' '' There followed perfunc- 
tory raising of glasses, but, likewise, the sickening 
silence of non-perception. I saw I was among the 
Scotch of Russia. Nothing daunted, I went to the 
piano and sang to them, and they raised a cheer. 
I sang again. There was more wine. They all 
sang at once, the welkin of Eastem Siberia rang, 
and we made merry far into the night. This was 
the very eve of the war. 

Blagoveschensk, on the Amur, is an appreci- 
able town, indeed the only town in a stretch of 
1,200 miles. This unwieldy name will go down 
into history. Some years before, the Russians had 
been engaged in absorbing Manchuria. There 
were acts of aggression on their part, fierce re- 
prisals by the Chinese. One day there was move- 
ment on the Manchurian shore. Rumour of an 



144 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

early attack spread through the town, and the 
tocsin was sounded. Four thousand unsuspecting 
Celestials were rounded up from streets and 
houses, then driven like sheep into the river. From 
the river none returned. It is said that none 
reached the Manchurian bank. 

Again the sledge gallops on its way. Again 
the Cossack posts roll by, and the long swell of 
Siberia rises and falls. Heading for outlying 
mines, we bear due North. Now we glide along 
some river, now take to the plains. Anon, we 
traverse a forest of birches. Is it ''mimicry," or 
mere wantonness? — for their tmnks are whiter 
than the very snow. In this solitude there is no 
wild life, no stirring tale of wolves. Yet what a 
figure I might have cut ! The rising with clenched 
teeth, the revolver drawn on the howling pack, 
the last cartridge fired, the quick command to cut 
loose the third horse, the sacrifice of Ivan, by 
devoted driver, and my scalding tears as I realize 
he has saved me ; finally, a verst ahead, the stout 
walls of the fort ! My mind's eye saw it all. 

Yet there reigned in that sledge a fear more 
insidious than of wolves — the fear of a man who 
cannot sleep. For sixteen out of each twenty- 
four hours I lay in the dark, sleepless, jolted, suf- 
focated by the thick felt covering, my nerves 
utterly unstrung. At dead of night I would enter 
some post station and cast myself on the floor. 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 145 

There were ten minutes here, and once or twice, 
in a few stertorous breaths, sleep came to me. 
But for those sixteen hours each night my mind 
fed upon itself. For its diversion I told myself 
the story of my life, from earliest days, and in 
minutest detail. I set myself problems in mining. 
I worked the Rand at twelve shillings a ton. I 
ran eight hundred stamps on a small island of my 
own. I became the greatest expert the world had 
known. One long, weary night I stood for Parlia- 
ment. At first my religious views gave offence; 
then the wives of my constituents heard I dressed 
for dinner, and it was all right. Later, I became 
Prime Minister. After each twilight, before the 
drawing of the felt blankets, I gave a concert. I 
sang 'The Yeoman of the Guard" and 'The Rose 
of Persia" from beginning to end. One evening I 
sang the "King's Highway" six and "The Garden 
of Sleep" eight times, their sad note accentuating 
the horrors of the coming hours. Assuming a rich 
bass, I sang nightly the "Calf of Gold" and the 
"Serenade" of Mephistopheles. As the words 
came from my lips they congealed; they coated 
my mouth with ice. Had the dead Gounod, I 
wondered, sung them at forty below zero? And 
so I sang, and shouted, and romanced, and my 
brain went to seed, and my depression hung ever 
heavier, until one midnight we drove into Stret- 
insk The journey was over. It had cost me 



146 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

nineteen nights of hell, and an injured nervous 
system. I vowed I would not go through it again 
for a thousand pounds a night, and from that de- 
cision I do not waver. 

The train that left Stretinsk next day started 
three days late. War had broken out. The main 
line was blocked with traffic, and on this branch 
things had to adjust themselves. 

I lay huddled in my furs, feeding at intervals, 
sleeping much, hardly noting the lapse of time. 
When we came to the main line refugees crowded 
aboard; at the eating-places strong women fought 
for food, and in these struggles for sustenance my 
lethargy fell from me. Every hour we were side- 
tracked to let pass a train with troops or supplies; 
our stops seemed interminable. We lost two days 
more, but there was no gap in that procession of 
trains to the East. 

At Lake Baikal there was transference to 
sledges, the passage of the lake taking some five 
hours. A military railroad crossed the ice. As 
the wagons, drawn by horses, came over one by 
one, all the menageries of the world seemed to 
be on the move. Regiments were marching across 
the lake — Cossacks of a roughish type ; Russia was 
not yet sending of her best. 

On the far shore, solitary, gazing out over 
Baikal, stood one clad from head to foot in rai- 
ment of snowy felt. He was tall, and bore him- 



GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 147 

self with a noble mien. This knightly figure — 

"Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful," 

as it might be some Arthur, come again to Came- 
lot, proved to be Prince Khilkoff, Russia's trusted 
Minister, guiding brain of the line that was to 
transport and feed a million men. An aristocrat, 
he had begun life in the shops of the Pennsylvania 
railroad, and working steadily up, mastered his 
craft. Now, in the fullness of years and wisdom, 
he stood there, called to solve Russia's tremendous 
problem. 

Two hours later there came in sight a green- 
domed cathedral. It was Irkutsk — city of con- 
victs — where Russia's political prisoners live and 
thrive. In Irkutsk one sees men who, in cattle or 
gold-mining, have made millions, who live in big 
houses, who drive fine horses, yet who will never 
leave Siberia alive. But they seem happy enough. 
Here, in winter, night takes the place of day. 
The restaurants, the dancing halls, open at eleven, 
at two they are in full swing, at five, filled with 
wine and wassail, the wretched convicts take them- 
selves to bed. Irkutsk, as they say in the States, 
is a "wide open" town. 

I was still in the Orient, in the longitude of 
Singapore, but affairs now called me to the West. 
Taking again the Siberian railroad, I set out on 
the nine days' journey to Moscow. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 

At Seraglio Point, where the waters of the 
Golden Horn mingle with those of the Bosphor- 
US5 I stood one evening in the twilight. As I 
gazed out over the expanse, the high outlines of 
Pera and Galata faded and Scutari became no 
more than a cloud. The air was balmy, the night 
utterly calm, and upon me lay the glamour of the 
East. Where, amid these shadows, lay "Cape 
Turk"? 

I stood there till the moon, bloodshot and 
golden, rose up over the Asiatic shore, and the 
night entered into her enchantment. This was 
the real Stamboul. By day I had judged her 
squalid, her soul escaped me ; but in the first hours 
of this night, as the moonbeams played about her 
minarets, comprehension came. 

It was Ramazan — the month of months — and 
after a day of fasting the people in their houses 
were entering on a night of festival. The streets 
were empty, but from behind the closed shutters 
came bursts of music, and the quivering falsetto 
of some Mahometan soloist rose and fell. I stood 

148 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 149 

alone, a silent listener to those weird cadences, 
and as they died, vanished into the recesses of the 
city, as had vanished, some sixty years before, the 
intelligent Arminius Vambery. 

Through the horrid purlieus of Galata a pro- 
cession passed next day to the palace gates of 
Dolma Bagtche. Some twenty closed carriages 
conveyed the harem from a mosque, and some 
threescore shrouded female forms were whisked 
rapidly past. Singly in the first three vehicles 
rode figures of a massive and elderly outline. 
Those I placed with certainty as wedded wives. 
The rest, riding four to a coach, were plainly of 
a meaner condition — ^perhaps the ladies of the en- 
tourage; but a certain grace of outline, and a 
je ne sais quoi in the air, seemed to indicate them 
as "those others." By each carriage, stately in 
the black frock and fez of their land of adoption, 
rode two Nubian eunuchs. As their Arabs 
pranced and curvetted to the crowds, they looked 
to be determined and pitiless guardians of the 
proprieties. 

With blare of barbaric music, a road lined two- 
deep with soldiers, with forced and mirthless 
cheering, Mahomet V, first constitutional Sultan 
of Turkey, drives to the Selamlik. He passes, this 
puppet, alone in his gorgeous chariot — an elderly 
man, flabby, washed out, he looks round weakly 
on the crowd, and shyly salutes. A captive for 



150 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

near thirty years, he was dragged by the Young 
Turks from prison to throne. But figs do not come 
from thistles. If this dazed old man shall blos- 
som into a king — into any personality at all — ^my 
eyes will have played me an unwonted trick. 
This elderly prisoner is no solution of Turkey's 
troubles. 

But Central Asia lies far away, and I must 
move on. Passing up the Bosphorus into the 
Black Sea, I came next day to Odessa. Here, on 
high natural terrace, above bay and shipping, 
stands a spacious and attractive city. A hundred 
and fifty feet below lies the sea and a great har- 
bour, and in the distance a vista of endless Rus- 
sian plains. It was Sunday evening; a military 
band played, and along the boulevard that fronts 
the sea a prosperous-looking crowd moved to and 
fro. The Jewish face was predominant, and I 
called to mind pogroms of recent date, and the 
Jews of Odessa going to their death in droves; 
yet here they were, well-dressed, uncringing, smil- 
ing, and here, moreover, were hundreds of hand- 
some young Jewesses, on whom it was a delight to 
gaze. Famed for her export of wheat, Odessa is 
to me henceforth the city of good looks. The 
Russian woman showed well on the boulevards 
that night; but it was the Jewess — the despised, 
immemorial Hebrew — who easily bore off the 
palm. 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 151 

I was now to coast the Black Sea, and a day 
out from Odessa landed at Sebastopol — a naval 
harbour and considerable town, that has played 
its part in history. The Crimea was the freak of 
a century — Britain's insanest act in modern times. 
Russia was altercating with Turkey on a religious 
matter — on the treatment of Christians in Asia 
Minor. As I understand history it was nothing 
more; the arriere-pensee^ if present, was faint. 
Constantinople was not aimed at, Turkey's integ- 
rity not even threatened. Yet in we dash, cats- 
paw of the Emperor Napoleon, with bagpipes 
playing, flags flying, and our corrupt army con- 
tractors cheering from the windows of Whitehall. 
It may have been magnificent but it was not war : 
moreover, we were on the wrong horse. 

And then the tactics of such a war ! If we had 
gained these few barren miles, where would we 
have been? Out on a little tongue of land, no 
more formidable to great and holy Russia than a 
hostile Anglesea to an armed England. 

We called ourselves the victors: but what a 
victory! What had we fought for? I doubt if 
the good Queen Victoria (R. but not yet I.) could 
herself have told. 

The result of it all was Russia's hatred for 
fifty years, her rapid advance into Central Asia, 
our expansion blocked there, our failure to absorb 
Afghanistan, the defection of Persia and Tibet, 



152 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

and a host of minor frontier wars and troubles too 
intricate to unravel. We have paid for our "vic- 
tory" ten times over. Let me say this : our Indian 
frontier is in superb strength; to this extent good 
has come out of evil, but I shall ever hold Eng- 
land's presence in the Crimea matter for repent- 
ance. 

The eastern shores of the Black Sea are moun- 
tainous, wooded, almost beautiful, and skirting 
them you come at last, in the south-east corner, 
to Batoum. A poor place this, but of some im- 
portance ; for an 8-inch pipe-line brings refined oil 
from the wells of Baku, five hundred miles away, 
and tank steamers, lying at the quay, turn a tap, 
load up, and are off to the ends of the earth. 

It was at Batoum I first met the Armenians; 
and even as the pious -zEneas suspected the Greeks, 
so henceforth I watched this tribe of evil repute. 
They say Jews may not enter the Caucasus. 
What Jew would want to? These subtle atroci- 
ties could run the Hebrew nation off its legs. Far 
in the mountains of Armenia the Ark rested on 
Ararat. Proud, we must suppose, of this tradi- 
tion, they adopted the Christian mythology, and 
entered their unquiet heritage. A thousand years 
of oppression has evolved a strange, not a Chris- 
tian type; prince among schemers, the ;^th power 
in subtlety, if his breadth of vision matched his 
cunning, the Armenian would rule the world. 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAilARKAND 153 

One Balthazar, an interpreter, was my first. 
He served me well and faithfully; born of a race 
of linguists, he spoke six tongues. He knew his 
tribe. "These Armenians are bloody liars," he 
said to me one day, and I have found this ma- 
tured opinion universally endorsed. 

Let it now be revealed that Svengali, who came 
'"out of the mysterious East," was of this race. 
He was bom at Erzeroum, Turkish Armenia, in 
October, 1818. He mastered music at Vienna in 
the forties, and, returning for a while to the East, 
developed strange powers of magnetism. He first 
saw Trilby in 1861. 

How do I know these things? I know more. 
His son is cashier in the Armenian Bank at 
Batoum. The black beard is deceptive, but he 
must be turned fifty; he speaks excellent French, 
and is going bald. We discussed the terms of a 
draft on Odessa, and no hint of recognition 
passed. But that high, thin nose, that hawk-like 
visage, Jewish, yet not Jewish ! There could be 
no mistake. He saw I knew, that I was deeply 
interested, and that it would make literary capi- 
tal — and he raised the discount an eighth. 

In the mountains, forty-five miles behind 
Batoum, in the heart of the Caucasus, is a copper- 
mine. It has been one of the tragedies of the last 
decade, but let that pass. The mine lies at 5,000 
feet, and through a distant nek in the ranges can 



154 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

be seen the white top of Mount Elburz, high-point 
of Europe. This country is Turkish in all but 
name. Turks worked in the mine, and Turkish 
mountaineers, armed to the teeth, sauntered down 
from their villages. In the valley, 3,000 feet be- 
low, lies the smelter, and at long last its furnaces 
were fired. Then a strange thing happened. As 
vultures, wheeling invisible in the heavens, swoop 
to the carcass, so Persians appeared before these 
furnaces. At the mine, at the works, Turks, Rus- 
sians, Georgians come and go; but at these fur- 
naces, gazing into their molten depths with the 
eyes of men long dead, and stoking, it seemed to 
me, as men would stoke for a rite, are always 
Persians. Now tell me — tell me, Zoroaster ! Or, 
you, perchance, Loge! Is this atavism? Is it the 
throw-back? Were these fortuitous posturings, 
or was it fire-worship I saw, in that lonely moun- 
tain valley at the back of Batoum? 

Tiflis, capital of the Caucasus, a large town in 
barren country, did not attract. On the exhibi- 
tion of roubles a motor was forthcoming, and at 
five on an October morning I drew out on the 
two hundred versts that led to Vladikavkaz. Two 
American ladies honoured my car. We followed 
the famous Georgian military road; and rising 
slowly up autumn valleys on to bleak moorlands, 
found ourselves by midday at 7,000 feet, the top 
of the pass. 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 153 

From here the road led down and down. The 
mountains closed in. The scene was obscured, 
but the road's fine engineering, the long, stoutly 
built snowsheds, made on me due impression. 
Still down it went, and we passed into a rugged 
and tremendous gorge, where, with sound as of 
artiller)^ a tyre burst, and whence we emerged, 
at the darkening, into low, wooded country and 
well-watered m.eadows, with the domes of Vladi- 
kavkaz no more than a league away. 

That evening, at the Hotel Europe, several 
were witness of a pathetic sight. The chauffeur, 
a young Swiss, flushed with wine and above him- 
self, suddenly entered the salon. Possessing him- 
self of the piano, ''Daisy, Daisy'' and several of 
the less intellectual of our folk-songs v/ere terribly 
butchered. Intimating to us that this effort was 
in honor of the English, he disappeared again into 
the night. Of Vladikavkaz, a featureless Russian 
town, I have nothing to say; but on the return 
journey, a few versts out, there was a sudden 
tremor, and the car collapsed. The danger looked 
mortal ; and there we were, trudging the road for 
help, ''marching through Georgia" for an ox team. 
Things went to glory with us that morning; the 
songster, jaded and morose, brought us into Tiflis 
a day overdue. 

Baku, on the shores of the Caspian, is the city 
of oil, and the ugliest spot in Europe. On three 



156 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

sides there is desert, dotted with groups of un- 
couth-looking oil wells. On the fourth lies the 
great inland sea, whose shallow waters, so easily 
lashed to fury, were now blue and sparkling in 
the balmy autumn sun. There is great commerce 
on the Caspian Sea. It is the highroad to North- 
ern Persia and to the territories of Central Asia, 
is the scene of big fisheries centring at Astrakhan, 
in which the sturgeon so handsomely plays a part, 
and outlet for that great river, the Volga, up 
which Baku oil, Astrakhan caviare, and Central 
Asian cotton crowd, from the spring melting of 
the ice until the month of November. 

In the streets of Baku, whose population is 
above a quarter of a million, walk Russians, Ar- 
menians, Persians, Tartars, Lesgins, Kalmucks, 
Jews, Greeks, Turkomans — a mixed and lawless 
throng. A few years ago Baku was in revolution. 
Many of the wells were maliciously fired, prop- 
erty was badly damaged, and a deep upheaval 
against authority seemed certain. But as at 
Odessa, where an organized massacre of Jews, by 
Christians, put the mob in humour, so here there 
was a throwing to the lions. This time the Tar- 
tars were let loose. The Armenians perished, but 
the Government was saved. They call this in 
medicine the use of the "counter-irritant." The 
method in politics is scientifically correct; it might 
conceivably one day save us India. Let us hope 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 157 

not, for the method is cynical; but then the va- 
garies of the religions, the hatred of creed for 
creed, tend to cynicism. The revenue Baku yields 
is fabulous. The Government tax on oil lands, 
leased out on a royalty basis, averages not less 
than 30 per cent, of the gross value of the oil pro- 
duced. Thirty per cent. ! And in the old days, 
when Paul Kruger and his ''corrupt oligarchy" 
put 5 per cent, net on the gold-mines of the Rand, 
we thought the end had come. 

Baku has done the British no good. A number 
of wells were bought by us, but bought too dear; 
they lacked good management, their owners had 
no local knowledge, some wells ran dry, a number 
lessened their yield, and the record is of loss from 
beginning to end. Fortunes have been made here, 
many fortunes, but these wells are no longer a 
speculation for the outsider. 

As I sailed down the shores of the Caspian the 
desert aspect changed. A greenness crept into the 
plain, forests came, then mountains, and at Enzeli 
I landed in heavy rain. 

So this was Persia ! I had looked for blue sky, 
barren wastes, trains of camels, and here were 
drenched green meadows, groves of mulberries, 
mud, and a people ragged and bedraggled. Such 
was the land for fifty miles as I drove South; then 
the rude postchaise ascended through forests, and 



158 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

by evening came out on the tableland of Persia. 
Here was the desert, the real thing, the Iran of 
song and story; and as for camels, under a full 
Eastern moon, heavily laden, there were thou- 
sands passing along that highway to the interior. 
At dead of night, with honeyed words, keepers of 
the post-houses bade me stop and enter. But 
never a toman charmed they from me, never a 
kran; for I carried my sustenance, I took my rest 
in the chaise under the sky, and my eyes, as the 
eyes of Rhoda and Minna, were fixed on the dis- 
tant hills. 

Yet because of this fixity I sinned. Next day, 
as we travelled, a horse failed. With lash and 
goad a brutal driver forced him on. The stricken, 
willing brute struggled gamely, till at last eyes 
and nostrils suddenly suffused with blood, and he 
fell exhausted. 

And I had let this thing be. Angered at any 
delay, I had protested all too feebly. Even now 
my desires seemed so vivid, those of the beast 
that lay there quaking so remote. It was not I, 
to my shame, but the Armenian, who laid a blan- 
ket over those sweating limbs ; yet had I done this 
for my dumb servant, or laid my hand a while 
over those tired, frightened eyes, I had gone into 
Persia a better man. I do not even know if he 
lived. In an hour a driver with fresh horses came 
from the post-house. Mounting to his seat, and 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 159 

galloping, he burst into a shrill song of love, hold- 
ing merry converse with Balthazar. I, who had 
come again to my right mind, lay back degraded 
and ashamed. 

All that day, and a second night, I drove on 
over the wastes; through the old city of Kazvin; 
past the oasis of Karaj, where grapes were grow- 
ing, until the giant white peak of Demavend stood 
out. At the fifty-third hour the open gates of 
Teheran received me. 

The Persians are sunk in squalor and in apathy. 
Weak in character, unstable as water, they look 
to be desperately poor material. Yet let us be 
fair, let us get to the root of these things. Cast- 
ing our eyes around, let them light on this stout 
burgess of Tunbridge Wells in the county of Kent. 
See him, breakfasted, complacent, emerge from 
semi-detached villa, wherein are found a buxom 
spouse, a warm bed, clean sheets, beef and beer, 
coals, hot and cold water, and the usual domestic 
ofRces. See him, fitly clad, wending his way to 
shop or business, working in comfort, and emerg- 
ing toward evening, richer by a pound sterling or 
more, to return to a dinner of meat, tobacco, and 
a good book. 

Take this man — typifying this our England — 
and mark him well. There ^ hut for the grace of 
Cromwell^ goes a Persian. For it is freedom, more 
than all else together, that has placed the English- 



160 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

man where he is, and it is despotism — ^bad, hope- 
less, vile despotism — that has put the Persian, 
physically and morally, where he is. Oliver, I 
salute you! Without you, where had we been 
to-day — or Europe ? What a way you had with a 
despot ! What a touch ! Do you recall that little 
procession through Whitehall? Can you re-pic- 
ture that mounting of steps, that removal of 
Flanders lace, that mystification of the worthy 
Juxon? Did you hear that thud. Protector? 
That was a man's head as it bounced into the 
sawdust. Quite an important head too; quite a 
good place, all things considered, for it to bounce. 
Charles died like a man. We grant him that. 
But hurrah for Cromwell and the axe! Should 
the liberty of these dear islands be ever in jeop- 
ardy, let it descend again and again. 

Under the Kajars, Persia has run utterly to 
seed. This dynasty, for a hundred years, has fur- 
nished debauchees, spendthrifts, fools, murderers, 
but never a financier, never a statesman. The 
land under them went fallow. It mattered little 
that men should sow or reap fine crops, for the 
officials took the crops; that others should breed 
flocks, or start thriving industries, for the Shah, 
his myrmidons, or the tax-gatherers marked them 
down. Holding absolute power, these Kajar des- 
pots, debauched to enervation, bored to extinc- 
tion, flattered out of their senses, have squandered. 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 161 

robbed, murdered, while Persia, their unhappy 
country, went to seed, and its people sank to the 
rags, squalor, and apathy in which I now see 
them. 

In the year 1909 they rebelled. Men from 
the mountains, the grizzled Bakhtiari, appeared 
before the capital. The cowardly troops of the 
Shah fled. The city fell with hardly a blow, 
A leader came forward, and a revolutionary gov- 
ernment was formed. The Shah, failing in a 
coup d'etat^ was deposed. His life was spared, 
and with six of his women he drove out of his 
city, bound for distant Odessa. His son, a child, 
they proclaimed king, with a regent of the princely 
family; but I could wish this damnable Kajar 
dynasty swept neck and crop out of the land. 

Teheran is a city set on a plain. Her earthen 
ramparts, that keep out no foe, extend for eleven 
miles, and are pierced by twelve stately gates. 
Behind Teheran, at half a day's journey, lie the 
mountains, whence, by cunningly wrought under- 
ground channels, water is carried to the city, and 
so she lies embowered in trees, an oasis in the 
surrounding desert. 

This city lies at near 4,000 feet, in the latitude 
of Southern Spain. The autumn sun is yet balmy, 
and the vendors of melons and pomegranates are 
still in the streets, but the nights are already cold, 
and the snow is lying far down the mountains. 



162 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

Teheran is a poor city, in a poorer country; yet a, 
quarter of a million people must live and trade; 
so we see, converging over the desert, from the 
oases, from villages of the plain, from cities more 
distant, from Ispahan, Yezd, Meshed and Kazvin, 
and from the shores of the Caspian, a motley traf- 
fic. Here are camels from the mountains, with 
firewood ; here are horses from Enzeli, packed with 
conical loaves of Russian sugar; here are asses 
from Karaj, with grapes, their weary driver him- 
self freighted with forage ; these horsemen, ragged 
and dusty, are pilgrims, returning from Kerbela; 
this creature is a beggar, this other a dervish from 
Khorassan; the shrouded objects in that cart are 
women off to a wedding, and the sewn-up thing 
lying across that mule a corpse. Thus runs the 
world at the gates of Teheran. 

The bazaars of the city, arched vaults of brick, 
that are but dimly lit from above, cover a great 
area. They form an endless twilight labyrinth 
of booths, of caravanserais, of eating-houses, 
where, in a day, one will see pass all the peoples 
of the East; where heavily laden trains of camels, 
with soft deliberate tread, stalk dimly through, 
scattering to right and left the unwary; where beg- 
gars importune, merchants beckon, mullahs glare, 
and fanatic Shiahs jostle; and where, hour after 
hour, I wandered alone, unoriented and utterly 
happy. 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 163 

This I noted : at two of the clock the bazaars 
were at their height. At four the crowd melted; 
at five the bazaars were empty, the booths closed, 
and the people making for the evening prayer at 
the mosques. In the squares, crowds would lin- 
ger awhile round some frenzied holy man; but 
with the fall of night the streets were bare, the 
gates closed, and the city fast settling to her 
rest. 

Just where the bazaars pour out their crowds 
toward evening stand the high walls of the 
palace. Within this considerable rectangle, in 
fact, is found not one palace but many — caprices 
of a spendthrift dynasty — and all at random are 
seen galleries, throne-rooms, an orangery, a circus, 
tiled kiosks, flower-gardens, and small lakes. In 
these revolutionary times people came and went 
at will. Unchallenged, I penetrated to the inner- 
most recess, where old trees hung over running 
water, and where kiosks, flower-beds, and small, 
placid lakes made an altogether lovely scene. 
Groups of Persians, without doubt the leading 
men of the realm, strolled here, and some high 
officials in uniform, but to the barbarian and his 
companion gave no thought. Suddenly there was 
a cry of ''Naib Sultaneh!" and the Regent of 
Persia, an ancient bearded man of dervish-like 
aspect, passed from behind some trees, and with a 
small retinue entered the palace. This old man, 



164 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

head of the Kajar tribe, and a prince of the blood, 
is but a cipher in the hands of the revolution; a 
personage for the moment, his day will soon pass. 
And then there came another cry of ''Sipahdar!" 
I turned, to see the obsequious Armenian, hat in 
hand, bowing low, and a man in black, with 
strong, flashing face — the only strong face in this 
land of apathy — ^moving towards the palace. As 
he reached the door, all those in the garden seemed 
to be there. They parted, some dozen men of 
note, and as he passed through bent themselves 
to the very ground. 

Such was this man — ^head of the revolution, 
commander of the army. Prime Minister, and the 
real ruler of Persia. A wealthy landowner of 
Mazanderan, a governor under the old regime, 
this strong being may, or may not, be the instru- 
ment forged to pull Persia from the mire. But, 
gentlemen of the inner circle, ye who adulated 
just now in the garden, a word with you ! This 
revolution, that has thrown you on its crest, is a 
very serious thing. The fighting is over, it is 
true ; but there is much thought, much spade-work 
entailed, and this dalliance in the royal pleas- 
aunce, this mere bringing of yourselves before the 
master's eye, will not see you through. Up, and 
away to your desks ! Up, and administer Persia !• 
You, my dear sir, on whose bosom repose medal- 
lions, are you aware that the drainage of Tabriz 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 165 

cries aloud to Heaven? You too, sirs, members of 
the Cabinet ! The postal serv'ice of the Southern 
cities is in abeyance, and robber bands beset the 
highways, the people of Ispahan clamour for jus- 
tice, and the men of the capital for stability. Per- 
sia is festering. Get to work, I say, each accord- 
ing to his capacity. Now is the accepted time. 
You, and your country, are in the balance. Eng- 
land and Russia knock at the door, and the sand 
in the glass runs low ! 

The vision of Teheran that will linger, was 
that seen from the ruins of the ancient city of 
Re. Springs gush here from the limestone, and 
for a mile round are old trees and a rich vegeta- 
tion. In this oasis stands the mosque of Shah 
Abdul Azim. On Fridays visited by thousands 
from the city, it was here, a dozen years ago, that 
the Shah Nazr-ed-Din fell by an assassin's hand. 
Standing on the old ramparts of Re, the oasis 
and its mosque behind me, I gazed out over the 
desert. Two leagues from me Teheran lay under 
its foliage. Above the tree-tops the eye rested 
on the minarets of Sipeh Salar, and on the castle 
of Qasr-i-Kajar that lies on a crest beyond the 
city walls. But the glamour lay on Sar-i-gabr-i- 
Agha, whose tiled dome was flashing among the 
trees like a great jewel. Clouds cross the heaven, 
and the dome sinks to a dead blue ; anon, it deep- 
ens, glows, the sun strikes, and then bursts out 



166 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

the glorious colour of turquoise, Persia's stone of 
stones, and her dead craftsmen become sacred in 
my eyes. 

This is my last night in Teheran. Waiting for 
Hatim Tai's cry of "Supper," I wrap myself 
warmly, and pass into the little garden where I 
am domiciled. As I pace slowly in the darkness, 
I reflect thus : Of later Persia, her Nadir was her 
zenith; but this cycle, that opened with paradox 
so auspicious, has rolled itself out. Bankrupt, her 
people sunk in apathy, vitiated by opium, her 
priests fanatic, her officials corrupt, her kings 
hopeless — can regeneration come? Does this revo- 
lution, whose echoes still reverberate, mean some- 
thing true and deep, a stirring of the bones, or is 
this one-time great country and her people now 
passing to the chamber of death? I fear for 
Persia. 

This is no garden of Shiraz where I walk; yet 
oleanders are blooming, and they tell me Shiraz 
herself has gone the way of all things Persian. 
How the illusions go here ! Yet see ! Rising as 
it rose of old — when Saadi and Hafiz sang, when 
roses blossomed by Bendemeer, and Ispahan 
reigned Queen of the East — the lovely orb of 
night moves up the sky. And this, truly, is no il- 
lusion. 



"Ah, moon of my delight who know'st no wane, 
The moon of heaven is rising once again: 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 167 

How oft hereafter rising shall she look 
Through this same garden after me in vain!" 

Over against Baku, on the Eastern shore of the 
Caspian, where no Englishman used to land with- 
out permit from Russia's Minister of War, lies 
the desert town of Krasnovodsk, starting-point of 
the Trans-Caspian railway. Some twelve hun- 
dred miles in length, this line was built to cement 
the Central Asiatic conquests of Russia and, as 
we are told, to menace the existence of our own 
Hindustan. 

If one travels by the evening train — for the 
authorities run two, if not three trains daily, seek- 
ing from this line, it would seem, no commercial 
result — ^he will pass out of Krasnovodsk toward 
six o'clock. It will be already dark. The long 
train will be nearly empty: in first and second 
class perhaps five passengers, and in the third a 
few natives of the region huddled in their first 
sleep, and the traveller will reflect on so strange a 
procession of empty trains disappearing into the 
Central Asian desert day after day, year after 
year. Then he will spread his bed, blow out the 
spluttering candle, and seek oblivion. 

Next morning the train is far out on the Turko- 
man Steppe. As flat and desert-like an expanse 
as can anywhere be found, this is seen stretching 
north with never a billow. Far to the south the 
faint outlines of a mountain range mark the bor- 



168 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

ider-line of Persia. There is sustenance in this 
desert. Camels are browsing on the scrub, and 
now and again horsemen ride into view ; their vil- 
lages lie south of the line, toward the frontier. 
But what a day of days! What exhilaration in 
the air! What a blending of sky with horizon! 
I was to learn from this moment that the Central 
Asian autumn is most perfect of all earthly cli- 
mates. 

Presently the train comes to Geok Tepe. 
Standing in full view are the mud walls, high 
and wide, of the famous fort, where, with assured 
water supply, forty-five thousand Turkomans cast 
the die, where upon a day in 1881 their power was 
broken for ever, and in the name of Skobeleff 
flashed across the world. I wandered inside the 
great rectangle of the fort, that might be a mile 
long by a third wide. I saw the Turkomans' well 
of water, and by it the national memorial to the 
victor. He attacked, it is there stated, with six 
thousand men, losing eleven hundred — a great but 
surely a foregone victory. Outside the fort, by 
the station, is the Skobeleff Museum. Kuropat- 
kin, chief of staff that day, himself no mean sol- 
dier, built this when Governor of Trans-Caspia, 
but the relics now rest in Tashkent. "A flighty, 
ill-balanced creature, this Skobeleff," said one who 
knew to me: "a character in no sense admirable. 

Yet place him on a battlefield, and in a flash its 

/ 



THE DREAM CITY OF SA^IARKAND 169 

strategy lay bare before him. He was unerring — 
a genius." 

Again the train rumbled over the steppe. In 
less than two hours Askabad came in sight, the 
capital of Trans-Caspia, an ugly desert town close 
on the Persian frontier, with a large garrison and 
many officials. Yet Askabad has claim to recog- 
nition. It is the chief centre of Babism, that re- 
ligion evolved and preached by the truly good 
Mirza Ali-Mahomet of Shiraz, executed in Ta- 
briz in 1849, a man I take to have been one of 
the inspired teachers of the century. There is 
food for thought in contrasting his end — on the 
scaffold, his followers scattered to the winds — 
with that of another founder of a religion, Mrs. 
Eddy, dying in her bed in Boston, with the elect 
round her, with two millions of dollars in the 
bank, and in the sure and certain hope that her 
name will become venerated and holy. 

At sunset we were travelling under the Persian 
mountains. Mentally, I stood on their crest and 
gazed down into the fair land of Khorassan, and 
I saw Meshed, with the tomb of the Imam all 
aglow, and the throng passing in the Khaiban. 
But the night came down, and the "vision splen- 
did" paled, and the next I knew it was eleven 
o'clock, and we were at the oasis of Merv. I left 
the train and entered a dirty Russian inn. 

There was a market in Merv next day. From 



170 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

dawn horsemen and men on foot, but mostly 
horsemen, for these Turkomans of the oasis are 
well-to-do, poured in. At ten o'clock I came on 
to the great market square. There I found some 
three or four thousand horses, each at its tether; 
their owners, tall bearded Turkomans in high 
sheepskin hats and quilted gowns, well-looking 
men of a strong Mongolian type, talked in 
groups, or sat at tea in the booths. It was a 
great market. There were camels laden with raw 
cotton and asses laden with melons; there were 
young camels for sale, and horses and sheep, and 
piles of native crockery, and grains, and sweet- 
meats, and silver-sheathed knives. One saw these 
people had money, and realized the cash value of 
a first-class oasis. 

Old Merv, very famous city of antiquity, was 
located a few miles from here; the ruins are still 
to be seen. Near its site, at Bairam-Ali, the Czar 
had laid out a private estate, with a cotton-clean- 
ing mill, orchards, and a jam factory; the fruit 
crop is enormous. 

At this season no green thing was showing in 
Merv. The trees were leafless, the cotton and the 
fruit plucked, the roads lay deep in dust. But the 
irrigation furrows were running full, and with 
spring there would come that burst of verdure 
that has made this oasis famous. 

From Merv a branch line runs south to Kushk, 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 171 

on the Afghan frontier. It is Russia's great mys- 
tery line, not to be traversed, even with special 
permit. There are, doubtless, troops down in this 
corner, and forts, and, it may be, as I have heard 
said, great stocks of railway material. But write 
these things off. The Russians will not — cannot 
— invade India in our day. The thing is a myth^ 
Thev know it. We know it. Kushk, with its 
branch line, need not worry us. 

I left Merv and passed again out into the 
wastes, that evening crossing, by a bridge that 
is near a mile in length, a classic river. This is 
the Oxus, or Amu Daria, that rises in the Pamirs. 
Its waters, fertilizing the land in the upper 
reaches, flow down to these Central Asian deserts, 
and discharge finally, five hundred miles to the 
north, into the inland Sea of Aral. Towards mid- 
night I alighted at the station of Kagan. 

I awoke to another of these glorious days of 
autumn. Taking scant heed of the ugly Russian 
settlement that clustered round the station of 
Kagan, I was soon driving over the plain. I was 
in Bokhara. These plains were the Emir's terri- 
tory; Bokhara the holy, the learned, the goal of 
travellers, and the mart of Central Asia, lay but 
eight miles away. 

Here was a fertile land, watered with many 
furrows. Cotton in the pod, yet unreaped, stood 
in the fields; there were green meadows where- 



J 



172 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

on the fat-tailed sheep browsed, and many mul- 
berry-trees. There was a great volume of traffic 
on the level road, which ever increased, and at 
length high walls appeared, and I passed into 
the city itself. I passed into a city of a hundred 
thousand people, congested, teeming, fetid, a city 
of dried mud and bricks, resting on a foundation 
of the refuse of centuries, with little architectural 
merit, with no vistas within or without, yet with 
a human, living interest that is not to be equalled 
in the whole world. It is Bokhara's colour that 
takes the eye. This is a wealthy city, a great cen- 
tre of the silk trade, and thousands of her people 
go clad in rainbow gowns of exceeding fineness 
and beauty. The poorer wear gowns of like bril- 
liant hue, but of a cheap Russian material; their 
vividness, and the leavening of these many fine 
silks, give to the Bokharan streets a matchless 
colouring. 

Then there are the men themselves — for the 
women of Bokhara you shall not see. Predomi- 
nant are the Sarts — the Bokhariots — in white tur- 
ban and silken gown, city-dwellers to the casual 
eye, with pale, intelligent, ultra-lascivious, 
bearded faces, effeminate, yet fanatic. These 
crowd the bazaars, many astride handsome horses, 
or spreading carpets on the open spaces before 
the mosques, sit to gossip. When the muezzins 
call, they leave their tea and melons, trooping to 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 173 

prayer; but if the prayers of these Sarts of Bok- 
hara avail in the ears of Allah, their faces do 
belie them. 

The Sart is not a Mongolian type, as are these 
tall, unpolished Turkomans and robust Kirghiz 
who pass through the bazaars. These men of 
the desert, with their fine physique and open face, 
are good to look on. They wear sheepskin hats 
and rude blouses; their religion, too, lacks the 
subtlety of the medresses; yet I declare their sim- 
ple desert invocations to be of a sweeter savour 
than all the prayers that rise from this fetid and 
corrupt city. 

The Jews of Bokhara, who have lived within 
her walls from time immemorial, are said to num- 
ber eight thousand. Often assailed in the olden 
times, tortured, robbed, killed, they have never- 
theless held their own, and are to-day a prosperous 
and tolerated community. In business they are 
held in high esteem; it is said the word of a 
Bokharan Jew is a bond, and indeed the words 
and bearing of those with whom I dealt impressed 
me. To-day he still may not bind his gown with 
a girdle, but with string, and by the Emir's edict 
there is enjoined a certain shaving of hair behind 
the ears; but take things for all in all, the Jew 
is contented in Bokhara, and he is her honest 
man. 

Afghans mingle in the throng of the bazaars. 



174 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

But with them Bokhara is no abiding city; they 
come with the camel caravans from Herat and 
Kabul, and will even so depart again. The pres- 
ence here of Persians is not so easily explained. 
What do these Shiahs in this holy centre of Sun- 
nism? In the past, beautiful Persian women were 
brought to Bokhara as slaves, and in the proud 
Sarts their blood still flows; but for the men of 
Iran, craven and schismatic, Bokhara can hold 
naught but a superb contempt. 

Here are strange people! Hindus with their 
caste marks, natives of India, who have no word 
of English, who, like grey friars of the East, steal 
about in prescribed cap and gown. There are 
four or five hundred of these here, without their 
women, living mirthless in caravanserais set apart. 
They are moneylenders — a trade forbidden to the 
followers of Mahomet — and have come, without 
exception, from the city or district of Shikarpur, 
in Sind. Their fathers, and to the same number, 
were in Bokhara thirty-five years ago. Schuyler 
describes them. In his day, too, they knew no 
English, but then, as now, ''Shikarpur, Shikarpur'' 
was on their tongues. They trade with small cap- 
itals, turning their money often, and earn, it is 
thought, 25 per cent., but they are secretive and 
hard to fathom. You will find these men again, 
in their sombre dress, in the bazaars of Tashkent, 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 175 

and always from "Shikarpur,'' where this special- 
ized profession must be now firmly set. 

Here is a large caravanserai of a better condi- 
tion. In it dwell some eighty Peshawaris — Brit- 
ish Indians, Mahometans, men of some status, 
among whom are English scholars. They are, to 
a man, agents in tea, covering not only this city 
but the trade of Central Asia. It is Chinese tea 
they deal in — green tea from Shanghai, z, univer- 
sal beverage here; but that the men of Peshawar 
should sell Chinese tea in Bokhara, and none but 
they, is one of the strangest bits of specialization 
in commerce. 

Outside the city walls, at meat in an upper 
chamber, sat three Englishmen. This was surely 
strangest of all. A stray Russian or two there 
might happen, but that the population of Bokhara 
should number three English wool-buyers — let 
this quaint fact be given to the world ! They fell 
on my English neck — the third in two years — and, 
placing before me kosher meat, bread, and dried 
apricots of the oasis, we talked until the sun set. 

Bokhara is a protectorate under Russia. To 
her Emir is given a measure of self-government 
and the power of life and death over his own 
people, whom he rules through his kushbegi^ or 
viceroy. He himself, son of that traitorous Emir 
who led the Russians into his own city, is not 



176 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

loved of the Bokhariots. He knows this; they 
say he has not yet entered his capital. 

Bokhara, the holy city, is no beauty spot. Be- 
hind those crenellated walls stretch no vistas; the 
mosques are not fine, their mosaics are sadly dam- 
aged; there is no architecture of note. One high 
brick tower alone stands out, from whose battle- 
ments, within a century, two Englishmen were 
hurled. There are many medresses^ where elderly, 
bearded students from the confines of mid-Asia 
come to hear exposition of the Scriptures, for the 
learning, no less than the holiness, of Bokhara is 
far-famed. But the first and last of Bokhara is 
her human interest. It is the vivid crowd in their 
silks, thronging bazaars and mosques and tea- 
shops, that makes this city of the plains unique 
in all the world. 

I gave a supper-party at Bokhara — a cham- 
pagne supper. The little hotel at Kagan was hard 
pressed to provide a menu, but the owner, a lady 
of the Baltic Provinces, rose to a great occasion. 
There were present the three English — the only 
domiciled English in Turkestan — two Belgians, 
of official standing in St. Petersburg, and a worthy 
Jew from the South of Russia. We were seven. 

The wine having circled, I stood and raised my 
glass. I said : "Gentlemen, there is only one toast 
to-night. It is to Russia, and her great work in 
Turkestan. We wish her right well. Whether 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 177 

she has got here all she hoped for, it is not for me 
to say. Her deficits in this country are still enor- 
mous, and it will take much irrigation, much cot- 
ton-growing, and many lamb-skins to bring about 
a financial balance. She is fortunate in the na- 
tives, who are contented, and will give her no 
trouble. She need not have, she will not have, 
so far as I can see, political trouble with any one ; 
certainly not with us. She will be able to develop 
in peace. Having put her hand to the plough, she 
will now carry through her big work, a work, in 
my humble opinion, that is for the ultimate benefit 
of humanity." ^ (Applause, during which the 
lady of the Baltic Provinces approaches with wild 
ducks, in her face the look of incipient victory.) 
One of those long, empty trains that lumber 
for ever out of Krasnovodsk to traverse the Turk- 
oman desert, left Kagan tow^ard midnight, and in 
the freshness of an early morning I alighted at 
the station of Samarkand. The city lay some 
miles away. I followed a rising road: there was 
heavy traffic of native carriages, of horsemen, of 
laden camels, and a Russian regiment of cavalry 
recruits galloped by. I came to the Russian town, 
and passed under avenues of tremendous trees. 
Planted when the city fell, more than forty years 
ago, those avenues will create for Samarkand a 
fresh renown. 

^Alas! poor Russia. 



178 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

At the crest of the rise, on breezy uplands, all 
in view of snowy ranges, lay the ancient, the im- 
perial city. Delhi! I cried, as the vista opened; 
Delhi, of the open Maidan and the imperial tra- 
ditions. Yet a colder Delhi, open and wind- 
swept, for this is high above the fetid and clois- 
tered Bokhara; the very Sarts look manly, and 
the Khirgiz of the steppe, seen here in numbers, 
are in radiant health. 

But look around! See these fanes of beauty, 
these deep colours flashing in the sun! Under 
this dome of blue is the tomb of Tamerlane. He 
lies in the crypt, beneath that block of black jas- 
per. One of humanity's greatest, he died in his 
city of Samarkand in 1405, Master of Asia. 
Ninth in succession from Genghis Khan, and 
great-grandfather of Baber, who conquered India, 
Tamerlane linked Mongol with Mogul; he gave 
distinction to the greatest line of warrior-states- 
men the world has known. 

The city in his day, one great mosaic, was fit 
setting for this imperial figure. His own works 
to that end are still seen. It is true the glorious 
tomb of him was not yet built; but his embellish- 
ments of the Shah-i-Zindeh, whose scrolls and 
arabesques are even yet in pristine perfection are 
extant, as are the ruins of Bibi Khanum, that im- 
mense mausoleum to his beloved Queen. 

Stand with me in the Registan of Samarkand 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 179 

— ne plus ultra of world travel — a small square 
of seventy yards, open as to one side to the ba- 
zaars, bounded as to three by mosques, high and 
square and old, whose fronts, covered in mosaic 
patterning of blue, yellow, green, and white, flash 
the autumn sun from a thousand facets. 

These mosques of the Registan, with their 
medresses, are not from Timur's day. Replacing 
earlier buildings, they date back but two hundred 
years; yet their colouring, that is now a lost art, 
is fast crumbling, and one must pass into their 
open courts, that lie behind, to view them in finest 
preservation. I stood on a Friday in the great 
court of the mosque of Tila-Kar; the mullahs 
cried on Allah, and the men of Samarkand knelt 
at His holy name. The sky was blue, the face 
of the mosque and the walls of the courtyard 
sparkled in their rich hues, the silken gowns and 
praying carpets of the worshippers hid all the 
earth. There was nothing at all but colour, yet 
ungarish, a perfect whole, and I knew that I 
looked on the world's best. 

The tiles of Samarkand are from the Persians 
— those rare and facile artificers. The scroll and 
the colour scheme is Persian or Arabian always — 
one sees here no Chinese influence ; blues, light and 
dark, yellow, green, and white, are used, red is 
rarely seen, and black not later than the time of 
Timur. But these are colours indeed! Their 



180 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

deep, rich glaze, compared with the modem, tells 
of a great art that is dead. No less than Titian, 
master colourist, these old Persians took a secret 
with them to the grave. But for how long are 
these beautiful things? Thes^ tiles, of so royal 
a facing, are but a small, poorish brick; they do 
not endure, and Samarkand's glories are cmmbling 
to the dust. 

Pondering these things, I came out on a sandy 
waste, the ancient burying-place of the dead. The 
sun was setting, and I turned to gaze over the city 
— this city of a dream. Near by were the tombs 
of the Shah-i-Zindeh ; yonder, above the trees, rose 
the blue dome of the Emperor's mausoleum; be- 
low me lay the supposititious and ever-lengthen- 
ing tomb of Daniel; in the city itself stood out the 
ruins of Bibi Khanum and the three mosques of 
Registan. And all around me lay the dead of 
Samarkand, a great company. On these breezy 
uplands, in view of the far-off hills, tens of thou- 
sands are lying with their prince. 

A dream city truly ! For these things are fast 
melting away. Even in the last years the mosaic 
minaret has fallen from Timur's tomb, and the 
inlaid cupola from the mosque of Ishrat Khan. 
These fell to a slight shock; the next, as like as 
not, may level Samarkand with the dust. 

God knows what were its one-time splendours ! 



THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 181 

What the old travellers saw! It is even now a 
treasure place of the world, and I see it crum- 
bling before my eyes. Its glories, 

"The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples," 

are melting into thin air. The day is not distant 
when they will be gone. 



CHAPTER VIII 

WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 

Amongst the ugly happenings in our Empire's 
histor}^ was the loss of the Argentine. We draw 
a veil at times, and you will hardly find these 
things in our school books; but about one hun- 
dred years ago a British general and his troops 
were driven from Buenos Aires, a British town, 
by three thousand Argentinos, and the Home Gov- 
ernment, beset as it then was with trouble, ordered 
our withdrawal from the country. 

Thus we lost the Argentine, and who knows 
what else on this continent. Firmly seated there 
during the nineteenth century, Britain had to-day 
been arbiter in South America. As for the Argen- 
tine, adjacent territories had fallen into her as 
comets fall into the sun; within her borders had 
now lain Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and South- 
ern Brazil. 

And what a country to lose! One travels in 
the train for days over plains more fertile than 
Kansas or Nebraska. As I have watched these 
roll past, with their wealth of maize and wheat, 
their endless herds of horses, cattle, and sheep, 

182 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 183 

I have shouted out in anger against the fates 
which drove us from this fair land. 

There is, to be sure, the law of compensation. 
Had we owned this country, diverting thither our 
people, our capital, for a hundred years, other 
parts of the Empire had suffered; Australia and 
New Zealand would not be where they are to-day. 
As it is, we have a big stake in Argentina, our in- 
vestments there figuring at £400,000,000. To 
this extent the past has been retrieved. 

The English have not gone to the Argentine in 
numbers, but about seventy years ago some thou- 
sands of Irish settled there. They took up land, 
and throve, and are now, in the third generation, 
very well off. Retaining a strong accent, and the 
shrewd, rather wizened physiognomy of their race, 
they have drifted in sentiment far from us. To 
all intents they are now Argentinos, and should a 
Senor Murphy wed a Senorita O'Flannigan, it is 
no British Consul who ties the civil knot. 

This same Buenos Aires is become the South 
American centre of gravity. It is a wealthy city 
of 1,600,000 people, partly Italian, growing fast, 
and to me least interesting of the world's great 
towns. Its people are crude, but strenuous; on 
their faces is deeply written the lust of greed. 

I dislike Buenos Aires, but am not blind to its 
future. It will grow this century, as Winnipeg 
and Hankow will grow. Because of a shallow 



184 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

water frontage it may never rank with the great- 
est ports, but in population is destined to be a 
world centre. 

You may sail from Buenos Aires one thousand 
miles up the River Parana, and come to Para- 
guay. This is a quaint, undeveloped State, that 
reached three hundred years ago, under the Jesuits, 
more civilization than it can now claim. But the 
Argentine railways are reaching out, and in time 
Paraguay will be brought in touch with the outer 
world. 

About thirty years ago a number of people 
left Queensland for Paraguay, to start a socialist 
colony. This was a failure. Practical socialism, 
for some of these Australians, proved too altru- 
istic; but it is fair to say the chief reasons for 
failure were the false estimates of the leader on 
whose advice they had come, a lack of capital, 
and the great distance of their colony from the 
markets. A second colony was started, leavened 
by idealists from England, and promises mod- 
erate success; in 1905, when I was in Paraguay, 
it was getting on its legs. 

To-day Paraguay exports cattle, timber, yerba 
tea, and oranges. Between it and Brazil, on the 
Iguazu River, are falls, only exceeded in gran- 
deur by those on the Zambesi and at Niagara, 
and as yet visited by few Europeans. 

The Paraguayans have a deep Indian strain, 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 185 

and stand low in the South American scale. 
Revolutions and fighting in the streets of Asun- 
cion, the little capital, still occupy much of their 
time. Their finance is rotten as their politics. 
When I was in Paraguay the paper dollar stood 
at eight cents — having gradually fallen from a 
gold basis. A recent revolution had given the 
currency its death-blow. On the eve of the out- 
break, with a keen prescience of his coming politi- 
cal extinction, the Finance Minister had possessed 
himself of the Government printing machine, and 
was known to have worked far into the night 
printing currency ''on his own." Next day, in 
the excitement of revolution, he disappeared. 

Paraguay has had three dictators of imperish- 
able fame. 

The first was Dr. Francia — to me, greatest of 
all South i\merican dictators. WTien Paraguay 
threw off Spain, in 1815 — for Francia came to 
power the year Napoleon fell — ^he became her first 
President. He was said to be the son of an In- 
dian woman by a French father, hence "Francia," 
but deep mysterj^ surrounded his birth and early 
life. He was educated at the University of Cor- 
doba, in Argentina, was a Doctor of Law, and in 
1815 was fifty-five years of age. For twenty-five 
years he was absolute ruler of Paraguay, so much 
so that, when he died, an old, old man, he left 
no rival. Those who failed to honour him, who 



186 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

in any degree asserted themselves, were got rid 
of. Executions were wholesale. Standing in 
front of his house of a morning, smoking a cigar, 
he looked out over the plaza and gave the signal 
for the volleys. In private life he was modest 
and retiring, spoke in a low voice, was a kind 
friend, and scrupulously honest with the State's 
finances ; but where power or ambition entered, he 
was a fiend, showing no mercy. Afraid, in his 
later years, of assassination, when he passed 
through the streets of Asuncion all were bidden 
to stand facing the wall; those who disobeyed 
were shot down by his body-guard. Coming sud- 
denly upon this little figure, dressed in black, 
women and children were often heard to scream. 
He ruled as never man ruled. 

He died quietly on Christmas Day, 1840, 
eighty years old. Some years ago, in Asuncion, 
lived a very old woman, a lace seller, who remem- 
bered the day of Dr. Francia's funeral. He was 
buried in the cathedral with great pomp. Next 
day, the flagstones covering the tomb were found 
strewn about and the body had disappeared. The 
common people believed — ^believe to this day — 
that he was taken by the devil ; but the alligators 
in the river close by, to whom his corpse was un- 
doubtedly thrown, could have told a different 
tale. It was many years before the fear of his 
almost supernatural power died away. 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 187 

He was followed by another great dictator — 
Lopez. Lopez came to power as a middle-aged 
man — a schoolmaster, if I recollect. With schol- 
arly leanings, and of a private life the most re- 
spectable, he, too, was absolutely upright with 
the public money. I picture him as short and 
stout, gazing at one benignantly over spectacles, 
not unlike Phiz's prints of Pickwick. Coming to 
autocracy late in life, he nevertheless developed 
lust of power and ambition to a remarkable 
degree. 

For many years he ruled with a rod iron as 
Francia's. Those who thwarted him, who con- 
spired, who asserted their wills in any degree, 
went inexorably to their death. Hundreds, prob- 
ably thousands, were thus put away by Lopez. 
He died in his bed, absolute master of Para- 
guay. 

To him succeeded his son, the younger Lopez. 
This was a man of different calibre. Not lacking 
in ability, he was weak, vain, and a deep drinker 
— antithesis of those two fathomless men who 
ruled before him. As envoy to France during his 
father's dictatorship, he met there a woman who 
was to exercise an extraordinary influence on 
South America. This was Madame Ljmch, widow 
of a French officer, by birth an Irish girl. She 
went with Lopez to Paraguay as his mistress. 
There her character developed; Lopez, who after 



188 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

some years became dictator in his father's shoes, 
was as wax in her hands. Exercising great power, 
and with a hellish cruelty, she wreaked vengeance 
on those who had slighted her. Hundreds were 
done to death by her orders. Her ambition for 
Lopez was military glory; playing on his vanity, 
she involved him in war successively, then simul- 
taneously, with Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. 
From 1867-70 this Irishwoman plunged a large 
part of the continent into bloodshed. The men 
of Paraguay fought like demons, Lopez himself 
displaying valour and skill in many battles. 
When the war finally ended, through exhaustion, 
young boys were still living, and a few men over 
seventy, but the manhood of Paraguay had prac- 
tically ceased to exist. The dictator lay dead on 
the field. 

Having written her name large on the page 
of history, Madame Lynch retired to Buenos 
Aires, and died there not many years ago. 

In the summer months, after the melting of 
the snow, one can cross the Andes from Argen- 
tina into Chile. The summit of the pass is at 
12,000 feet, and on the boundary line, erected 
by Chile, stands a colossal figure of Christ. Some 
years ago, when this figure was unveiled, the 
ceremony was made the occasion for a demonstra- 
tion, and many political and religious personages 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 189 

from Santiago attended. Afterwards champagne 
was served, and having drunk heartily, the com- 
pany proceeded to break the empty bottles against 
the statue for luck. 

There are quite a number of statues of Christ 
in Chile. Their erection has been coincident with 
a marked deterioration in the national character. 
From hearsay I had expected to find the Chilenos 
rather above the other peoples of South America. 
I came away disillusioned. They have the best 
navy and army, no doubt, but in the things which 
really count — honesty and character — they are 
lacking. 

Much of this deterioration, I believe, is due to 
that accursed heritage, the nitrate fields. In the 
old days Chile was poor but self-reliant, working 
hard to make ends meet. Then came the success- 
ful war with Peru and the annexation of Tara- 
paca. With Tarapaca came the nitrates, and 
from these, as export tax, the Chilian treasury 
was soon receiving some one and a half millions 
sterling anni;ally. 

This large unearned increment debauched the 
little community. With such a revenue to cut up, 
politics became a thriving business at Santiago; 
senators, deputies, and their friends and partisans 
went into politics for what they could make, and 
hundreds of parasites grew to batten on the reve- 
nue. Public money was squandered, the State 



190 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

robbed, and an era of corruption set in. It is true 
that Chile has never defaulted, nor do I think she 
will, but her internal currency is rotten. The gold 
dollar note, when I was in Chile, was worth nine- 
pence. 

The climate of Central Chile is very delightful. 
As against a small rainfall, there are streams fed 
by never- failing Andean snows, and under judi- 
cious irrigation the coastal valleys yield bounte- 
ously. Chilian wines are good, flowers there are 
glorious, with care the fruit might be unexcelled ; 
at roadside stations, in the seasons, peasant women 
display piles of figs, peaches, nectarines, and pears 
most fair to look on, but, through careless culti- 
vation, lacking in flavour. The watermelon crop 
is gigantic. But the palm must be given to the 
Chilian grape; those of Huasco and Coquimbo are 
such as Californian vineyards cannot rival. 

At the hot baths of Cauquenes, where sciatica 
took me, the vegetation, the surroundings were 
those of old Cape Colony. I might have been 
living outside Paarl or Stellenbosch. Beyond the 
mountains, on the plains of Argentina, all was 
life and energy ; but here, in this quiet valley, was 
only repose. After the midday meal the world 
slept. I, who did not sleep, strolled lazily under 
the oak avenues or sat in the old garden dreaming. 
For days, as I dreamed, a verse eluded me. Long 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 191 

after, when he who wrote it had passed to the 
grave, it came to me : — 

"Here, where the world is quiet: 
Here, where all trouble seems 

Dead, winds and spent waves riot 
In doubtful dream of dreams; 

I watch the green fields growing 

For reaping folk and sowing. 

For harvest time and mowing, 
A sleepy world of streams.'* 

Such was Cauquenes, of Central Chile. 

There are majestic views of the Andes from 
many spots in Chile, and Aconcagua — ^highest 
point in the New World — can be seen on a clear 
day from the bay of Valparaiso. The traveller 
southwards will find beauty of another kind — 
the park of the late Madame Cousino, at Lota. 
Here, on a bold headland, is a landscape in which 
flowers and foliage mingle in gorgeous profusion; 
half nature, half art, it is a thing of real excel- 
lence. Beneath this spot, and stretching out under 
the ocean, lies the coal seam from which the 
Cousino family won the largest fortune of Chile. 

As one sails still southwards the climate be- 
comes wet and ever colder. The coast is rugged 
and broken, and mists often hide the land. 
Wrapped heavily up, I stood shivering, and 
watched the steamer enter the Straits of Magel- 
lan. Here, though bitterly cold, it was more 
sheltered. The mists lifted; that night we passed 
between snow-clad mountain ranges, their purity 



192 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

of outline heightened in the brilliant moonlight. 

At daybreak the coasts were again low-lying. 
We dropped anchor off Punta Arenas, capital of 
Chilian Patagonia and most southerly town in 
the world ; across the straits lay Tierra del Fuego. 

It was a frosty autumn moming, but as yet no 
snow had fallen. Landing at the wharf of Punta 
Arenas, I started rapidly for the interior of Pata- 
gonia. This was new ground to me, and as ever 
on these occasions I was mentally exalted; I fan- 
cied myself on the eve of great things — another 
Valdivia, another Almagro. 

When I had walked about two miles, heading 
due N.E. by N., a hoarse droning sound came up 
from the straits; the steamer's siren was calling 
passengers on board. My day-dream was over; 
turning my back on the interior, I walked rapidly 
back to the wharf. 

Punta Arenas began as a gold-mining centre. 
It was started, strange to say, by Austrians, who 
came to work the alluvial gravels of Tierra del 
Fuego. The richest of the gravel is now ex- 
hausted, but the winter storms still concentrate 
this material on the beaches, enabling some hun- 
dreds of men, during the summer, to earn a pre- 
carious living. Gold-dredging on a large scale 
has been tried on Tierra del Fuego, but has failed. 

Several thousand Austrians now make Punta 
Arenas their headquarters. A number of these are 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 193 

still gold-washers, but more regular work is found 
in wool-shearing, or on the big sheep farms of the 
Tierra or the mainland. Sheep-farming has really 
made Punta Arenas; it is now the centre of a 
great grazing area, and already equipped with two 
freezing works. 

Tierra del Fuego, a No-Man's-Land till gold- 
washing and sheep-farming drew there a small 
population, belongs in part to Argentina, in part 
to Chile. A great man has already written his 
mark on its history. Between twenty and thirty 
years ago, in the days of the richest gold finds, 
Julius Popper became despot of Tierra del Fuego. 
This man was a Roumanian by birth; entering the. 
Russian army as a private soldier, he in time rose 
to be captain. He is next heard of at Buenos 
Ayres, securing from the Government Fuegian 
mining right; setting up his headquarters at Se- 
bastian Bay, he brought out the first Austrians to 
work his concessions. 

He found goM in plenty, and squandered it 
regally. It is said he acted as unofficial governor 
for the Argentine, but was too formidable for his 
power to be questioned. He did as he liked, 
among other things making an issue of gold coins. 
The Fuegian Indians he regarded as animals; 
when angered, he would go out and shoot them 
down as one would shoot birds. Once, finding 
six Indians working gold gravel for another white 



194f THE SHADOW-SHOW 

man, he shot them all with his own hand. Fear- 
ing attack from the Indians, or discovery of his 
workings, he built a tower, where, telescope in 
hand, he sat for hours each day scanning the 
horizon. 

Hearing of mineral richness, prospecting bands 
came over, ever and anon, from the Chilian side 
or from the mainland. These he always disarmed 
or sent back; I have heard it said that some he 
shot down. 

At last there came a band, among whom was 
a determined Frenchman. These men Popper 
disarmed as usual, and despatched, over barren 
and hostile country, into Chilian territory. By 
a miracle they escaped with their lives. But the 
Frenchman vowed Popper's death. Following 
him, shortly after this, to Buenos Ayres, he is 
known to have tracked him to his hotel. There 
is no proof of these things — one can but piece 
together. Next morning Popper came downstairs 
and drank his coffee; an hour later he lay dead. 
Leader of men, strong, unscrupulous, the despot 
of Tierra del Fuego had gone to his reckoning. 

Northern Chile is a land where it never rains, 
possibly not an inch in a century, and is therefore 
a desert. But note, again, the law of compensa- 
tion. There is no rain, no green thing; but be- 
cause there is no rain, deposits and chemical salts 
in the earth, such as guano, nitrates, borax, and 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 195 

copper carbonates, are not dissolved nor washed 
away, and this desert region has therefore yielded 
great wealth. 

Beyond this desert, in the interior, lies the 
extensive though little known country of Bolivia, 
called after Simon Bolivar, the great Liberator — 
the George Washington of South America — who 
freed much of the continent from the misrule of 
Spain. The misrule, be it noted, is still there, 
though Spain has vanished. But it is more seemly 
to see a country misruled by its own people than 
by strangers, and to this extent Bolivar's heroic 
acts have borne fruit. 

The Liberator accepted the position of Bolivia's 
first President; after a short rule, bigger affairs 
required his departure for Peru, and he did not 
return. 

Bolivia's most picturesque ruler was Melgarejo, 
who rose from peasant boy to be successful gen- 
eral, and finally dictator. During his time, about 
the year 1864, the British Minister to Bolivia 
was found to have taken part in some internal 
political question, aimed possibly at Melgarejo's 
power. The story runs that the President ordered 
him to be strapped to a mule, facing its tail, and 
lashed out of the capital; but an old American, 
living in Oruro, who in those days was Melgare- 
jo's coachman, gave this tale the lie. The Min- 
ister was handed his papers, he was asked to leave 



196 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

the country, and he went. This insult, report 
says, so enraged Queen Victoria, that she blotted 
Bolivia from the map; and it was only in 19 lO, 
after an interval of forty-five years, that we were 
again represented at La Paz by a Minister. 

Malgarejo, having made the country too hot to 
hold him, fled to Peru with a handsome woman 
and considerable booty. He was afterwards as- 
sassinated in Lima. 

The far interior and trans-Andean Bolivia is 
low-lying and unhealthy. Its forests yield rubber 
in increasing quantity, which mostly finds outlet 
down the Amazon. The valuable Acre territory, 
rich in rubber, was sold some years ago by Bolivia 
to Brazil for two millions sterling. About the 
same time a territorial deal with Chile brought in 
a further half-million. 

With two-and-a-half millions liquid in its treas- 
ury, Bolivia made a resolution. It was deter- 
mined that all this money be spent on railways, 
and with this in view, the Government entered 
into a comprehensive financial and railway deal 
with New York bankers. 

But human nature is weak, Bolivian politicians 
rapacious, and I venture to guess there will be 
gigantic leakages. It was told at La Paz that a 
high personage, whose longings turn towards 
Paris, had already cut into the fund for an im- 
mense slice. 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 197 

The South American politician is a stickler for 
etiquette. He may rob the treasury, it is true, 
but he will do so in a well-fitting frock-coat. 
His manners are charming, and he alone, in this 
continent, wears the tall hat. Up in the little 
Andean capital, smartly turned out men of this 
type are now working their will on Bolivia's nest- 

egg. 

The centre of energy in Bolivia — the mining 

region — is the plateau, at a height of over 12,000 

feet. Here, over two hundred miles apart, lie 

Sucre and La Paz — one official, the other actual, 

capital. The location of La Paz, lying in the 

shade of lUimani, and near to Sorata, is indeed 

striking. 

But the strangest town of Bolivia — of all the 
New World — is Potosi. It lies at the base of 
Potosi — that mountain whose discovery altered 
the history of the world. It was in this wise : — » 
In the year 1545, an Indian found silver veins in 
the mountain. These were so rich that their fame 
reached Pizarro at Lima, and conquistadores came 
to Potosi, to annex the mines for the King of 
Spain. 

They yielded fabulously. The one-fifth roy- 
alty payable to the King amounted, in the first 
fifty years alone, to two hundred and fifty-nine 
million sterling. It was this huge revenue from 
Potosi, more than from Mexico and all the Span- 



198 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

ish Main, which set Spain at the head of Europe. 
But for this wealth she would have sunk centuries 
before she did; history is clear on that point. 
With this revenue pouring in, Spain overawed, 
her poorer neighbours, she gained vast prestige, 
she bought the friendship of the Church, and of 
its brutal lever, the Inquisition, and she acquired 
and consolidated her Western Empire. 

But for Potosi, Spain's dealings with South 
America had perhaps ended with a few bands of 
adventurers, who, finding no second Inca treasure, 
had departed in disillusion, leaving that continent 
to France, Holland, and England; but for Po- 
tosi, the Church of Rome had languished for 
funds, and the worldly power they bring, and, it 
may be, had adopted the meekness of its Founder, 
who said: ''My kingdom is not of this earth"; 
but for Potosi, there had been no Spanish Ar- 
mada; but for Potosi, there had been no Spanish- 
owned Cuba, no Spanish- American war, no charge 
of rough-riders at San Juan, no elevation of Mr. 
Roosevelt to the Presidency, no denunciation of 
the trusts, no panic in Wall Street in the latter 
part of 19.07. A long chain of cause and effect 
reaches out from the discovery of silver in that 
far-off mountain. 

Spain has set her mark on Potosi. Once the 
greatest city of South America, it is tcnday small 
and decayed, yet boasts a score of fine old 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 199 

churches. Quite intact, a superb building, is the 
Royal Mint, from whose portals there passed 
those wonderful royalties to the Kings of Spain. 
In this strange town Indian hovels stand beside 
stone fagades and carved doorways of real beauty. 

Twenty thousand Indians, and few besides, live 
to-day in Potosi. They work in the mountain, as 
their ancestors did three hundred years ago, and 
though the yield of silver is now insignificant, its 
tin lodes are profitable. 

Made roads in Bolivia are few, and one rarely 
travels but on muleback; a second mule carries 
food and bedding; a day's journey is ten 
leagues — thirty miles. At night you reach a 
small Indian village and enter a filthy hut; you 
spread your mattress on the mud floor, eat some 
bread and tinned food, and, wearied out, fall 
asleep. Nights are cold on the plateau, yet be- 
fore daylight your muleteer can be heard fitting 
the animals with their cumbrous saddles; you rise, 
stiff, shivering, depressed, roll up mattress and 
blankets, and are off at the dawn. It is the 
nadir of travel. 

The Indians of the Bolivian Andes, degenerate 
descendants of the Incas, are a mild people, gain- 
ing a scanty subsistence from their poor patches 
of cultivation. They supplement this by mining 
and as carriers, their herds of llamas, laden with 
stores or with tin ore, dotting the roads. They 



200 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

are filthy in their habits, much given to strong 
drink, and of a deep religious strain. On a Good 
Friday I stood in the plaza at Oruro and saw the 
Holy Image carried in priestly procession. Thou- 
sands of Indians followed, reverent in mien; an 
Indian band played holy music, and the Host 
was raised: all hats were doffed; many fell on 
their knees muttering hoarse cries. 
y'"Such is religion in the Andes- — a religion of 
/th e senses, not of the brain,. Next day, feast-day 
and holiday, these people, men and women, lay 
in the very ecstasy of drink. For days they wal- 
lowed in it; then got up and went about their 
business, good-natured, ignorant, superstitious, 
filthy — a little higher than the beasts of the fields. 
I went out from Bolivia over Lake Titicaca, 
that lies 12,500 feet above the sea. On an island 
of Titicaca, so runs the legend, took place the 
mystic birth of the Inca race. There stood the 
sacred temple of the sun, whose stately stone pil- 
lars, brought we know not whence, are still to be 
seen. On the far horizon, beyond the level ex- 
panse of the lake, all red-tinged in the sunset, rose 
Sorata and the white peaks of the higher Andes. 

When it became known, on November 15, 
1889, that the Emperor was deposed, and the Re- 
public proclaimed, there was rejoicing in the 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH A^IERICA 201 

streets of Rio Janeiro: Brazil had ceased to be 
an Empire. 

All accounts show Dom Pedro to have been a 
charming man and a learned scientist. His faults 
were — he was old, his grip over the country had 
not been firm, his successor was a woman, and, 
some say, priestridden. He himself was liked, 
but the monarchy was not liked. So the republi- 
can party, then in the ascendant, gave him twenty- 
four hours to leave the country, and he went. 

With the Republic came party politics and the 
spoils system, and as there are a Federal and 
twenty State Governments in the country, the 
division of the spoils in Brazil is a big industry. 
The Brazilian is lazy; he is not a pioneer, and 
does little to develop the huge country lying at 
his front door. But he must live; he is not lack- 
ing in shrewdness, so he takes the line of least 
resistance and goes into politics. Politics is his 
business. One may compare the Brazilians to 
those people cast on the island, who lived by tak- 
ing in each other's washing; all Brazilians, in like 
manner, seeming to live on the Government. 
While the abler acquire more or less power and 
a firmer grip on the spoils, there is not enough to 
go round, so the average functionary, wretchedly 
paid, supplements his income illicitly. 

To me, this is all very strange. Hardened trav- 
eller as I am, I yet look on Brazil as one of the 



202 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

loveliest and most romantic countries in the world, 
while its richness is a byword. Brazil should con- 
tain a race of Nature worshippers, revelling in 
its glorious scenery, its harbours and waterfalls, its 
primeval forests; lusty pioneers, converting its 
fertile soil not only to coffee, but to a like yield 
of sugar, cotton, maize, tobacco, fruit, and any 
other staple the world needs ; covering its uplands 
with homesteads and its plains with cattle ; work- 
ing its minerals with energy, and making, at least 
of the southern half, a great, brilliant, all-em- 
bracing land. 

Such is my ideal. In reality, the educated Bra- 
zilian is a town-dweller, guiltless of romance, 
given over rabidly to politics and their spoil, a 
parasite, and with it all ineffective. His good 
points are a certain polish, relic of the days of 
the Empire, a kindnes of manner, more marked 
than in the Spanish Republics, a readiness to be 
amused, and an intense love of music; but in es- 
sentials he is a failure. 

Brazil is of course progressing, but this progress 
is due to the energy of British, Germans, Italians, 
and Portuguese. The present Federal Govern- 
ment is the best Brazil has had; but woe betide 
the victim on whom any State official casts his 
snaky eye. 

Who can describe the beauty of Brazil? In 
the mountains behind Rio Janeiro there is a peak 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 203 

named Corcovado; the view from this of sea, har- 
bour, forests, mountains, and a great city appals 
you with its beauty. Rio Janeiro is the jewel of 
the world. Where, too, will you see fairer spots 
than the bay of Bahia or the inlets to Victoria and 
Santos? Such as these are the doors of fairy- 
land. 

In the interior, too, there is charm and beauty 
■ — forest-girt Petropolis, the mountain capital, the 
wonderful railroad from Santos, the picturesque 
and wealthy Sao Paulo, the vistas seen from coffee 
estates, the dead city of St. John del Rey, with 
its fine old churches, the thriving German home- 
steads in the south, and a hundred glimpses of 
forests, waterfalls, trees blazing with colour, and 
distant mountains — in a word. Nature unsur- 
passed. 

But when the hour of food draws near, beware ! 
The Brazilian cooks with a rancid lard, whose 
savour is of dead bodies ; his relish for this horror 
is not to be comprehended by us. Yet at the same 
meal one will be offered oranges and coffee of a 
taste divine. 

But how they exasperate one, this nation of 
officials ! I arrived at Rio once, and on the next 
day went to the Custom House. My trunk lay 
there ; but it was a saint's day, and the place was 
shut. 

'1 wish your saints were in Hades "^ I shouted; 



204 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

''What right has a saint to keep me from my 
trunk?" A man passing gave a sickly smile, and 
edged away. 

What a farce are these observances ! The edu- 
cated Brazilian has about as much use for saints 
as I have. Yet his calendar is full of them. 
Their days are officially observed, Government of- 
fices are closed, and business disorganized. 

Next day I went back for my trunk. I waited 
an hour, cheerfully, in a queue of Portuguese im- 
migrants, and was passed by time and again. At 
last, receiving my papers, I waited another hour, 
while the official, for reasons of his own, passed 
me and attended a group of compatriots. When 
I got my trunk it was twenty-six hours overdue, 
and the Brazilian Customs had made an enemy 
for life. 

One notes how many Brazilians are dressed 
deeply in black. Unlike the Poles, vowed to that 
colour till one shall reintegrate their kingdom, I 
can only assume they are sworn thus sombrely to 
await the return of the milreis to par, whence 
their misguided actions have far driven it. 

Northern, or Equatorial, Brazil is divided into 
the States of Para and Amazonas. This vast 
territory lives by one industry — rubber, and con- 
ducts its business along one main highway — the 
Amazon, down this stream passing perhaps one 
quarter of the world's rubber supply. 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 205 

The Amazon's tributaries number among them 
mighty rivers. On these, small steamers ply, 
carrying into the interior labourers and stores, and 
returning with cargoes of rubber. The labourers 
who go into the rubber districts return in reduced 
numbers, for the mortality, due to malaria, small- 
pox, or, it may be, the poisoned arrows of Indians, 
is ghastly. It is said that one in three does not* 
return. 

From Para the steamer ''Lanfranc," of 6,000 
tons, passed up the great river. Rich tropical 
forests lined each bank, but here and there rude 
huts, natives in their canoes, or a small clearing 
of cocoa or bananas, denoted a scattered popula- 
tion. The heat was excessive ; flocks of parakeets 
clove the air, mosquitoes descended on us, and 
the loathly snouts of alligators appeared above 
the muddy waters. On the fourth day, 1,000 
miles up, we reached the junction with the Rio 
Negro, and the town of Manaos. 

Manaos, centre of the rubber trade, is the cap- 
ital and only town of Amazonas, and has some 
fifty thousand inhabitants. It is a half-baked 
place, with a high death-rate. Its main feature 
is an opera-house, with mosaic dom.e, built by the 
Government at great expense, but it seemed to 
me the money might have been laid out to better 
advantage. The opera-house was completed 
twelve years before, but the town in my time still 



206 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

lacked drainage. An Italian company duly ar- 
rived to open the opera; but yellow fever got 
there first, so they opened the new cemetery. 

The Government of Amazonas has been cor- 
ruption personified. While the Federal Govern- 
ment receives the customs dues on imports, the 
several States are entitled to those on exports. 
Levying, then, an export tax on rubber of over 
20 per cent., the Amazonas Government has been 
in receipt of a large revenue, this being supple- 
mented by a loan, equal to several million pounds, 
issued in Paris. 

What has it to show for all this? An empty 
treasury, with salaries six months in arrears, an 
opera-house, a number of unfinished Government 
buildings, many retired Brazilian and Portuguese 
contractors living abroad in luxury, certain flash 
women departing with well-filled purses, and a 
stream of Governors, Ministers, and functionaries 
making for Paris or Lisbon. One head of the 
State there was with some pretence to statesman- 
ship. In a forest clearing, three miles out of 
Manaos, I saw the house in which he was found 
strangled. The rest were vile. A recent Gov- 
ernor cleaned up a million pounds during his four 
years of office. This person visited Paris before 
taking over the government, and in a cafe got into 
trouble with, and insulted, a French officer, who 
promptly knocked him down. Rising, and wiping 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 207 

his bleeding face, he said, "Do you know I am a 
colonel in the Brazilian army, and the Governor- 
elect of Amaonas?" Said the Frenchman, bash- 
ing him over the head, "Well, take that for being 
a colonel, that for being Governor of Amazonas !" 
and felled him again to the ground. But Brazil 
is a strange country; before he dies this man will 
have his statue in the streets of Manaos. Justice 
in Amazonas is for sale. On the front of the law 
courts, in large letters, is the word "LEX." I 
looked up at this and smiled. The Brazilian with 
me said, "That's Latin." I answered, "Yes, I 
know. The Law — and the Profits'' 

Round the warehouses of Manaos there is a 
smell as of a million herrings. It comes from 
the piles of smoked rubber perspiring workmen 
are packing for export to New York, Liverpool, 
and Hamburg. 

While Southern Brazil is a paradise, and Para, 
even, habitable, there can be but one excuse for 
living in Manaos — a big income. It is a place of 
too much heat and too little comfort; the cost 
of living is enormous, the risk of dying is appre- 
ciable. 

In Lima, capital of Peru, the city he founded, 
Pizarro's corpse lies in the cathedral in a glass 
cofRn. Standing by this, my thoughts went back 
to Atahualpa, last of the Incas, made captive by 



208 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

Pizarro, ransomed with the treasure of Cuzco, 
then brutally murdered. By this act of treachery 
Spain set her foot on the neck of South America, 
while Holy Mother Church, herself torturer of 
men's bodies, looked and palliated. 

''You brute, Pizarro," I remember saying, "I 
could kick your coffin to pieces!" The mummy's 
face grinned placidly. 

From Lima I went up the mountain railroad to 
Oroya, riding thence forty leagues over the pampa 
to Cerro de Pasco, 15,000 feet up, highest town 
in the world, and a mining centre since 1630. 

Unable to sleep at this altitude, I rose next 
morning before dawn, and throwing my poncho 
around me, went into the street. It was bitterly 
cold, and a dense fog lay over Cerro de Pasco. 
Indians, wrapped in their blankets, stole out of 
the mist and passed silently. I heard a flock of 
llamas go shuffling by, and a hideous face — ^half 
sheep, half camel — came close up and peered into 
mine. For a time all was silent, then, from out 
the mist, came a drunken sigh, and some belated 
reveller turned in his sleep. A ghostly dawn of 
day indeed, this, on the roof of the world ! The 
cold alone seemed real; it cut to the marrow. I 
returned to my bed in the strange little hostelry, 
and at last slept. 

Arequipa, in Southern Peru, is a town of charm. 
Lying at 7,500 feet, the climate is nearly perfect. 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 209 

while three great mountains, rising white into the 
sky, lend to it extreme beauty. A river skirts 
the town, its course marked for miles with gardens 
and orchards. Walking along the streets, I 
looked through doorways into old Spanish patios. 
Tended with care, many of these were filled with 
rich colour, while in some, masses of blossom, 
rising above the roof's horizon, rested against a 
background of the eternal snows. A centre of the 
Roman hierarchy from early Spanish days, Are- 
quipa is full of fine old churches, and is still an 
ecclesiastic stronghold. Standing one day in the 
plaza^ the swell of music from the cathedral 
reached me, and I went in. Boys' voices, alternat- 
ing with men's, were chanting; these ceasing, the 
organ burst into glorious sound. 

I sat entranced, as one lifted up. I had been 
drinking strong coffee, and the music ran through 
my nerves as it were wine. 

And then, it seemed to me, I crossed the aisle 
and ascended the pulpit. A stream of words 
rolled from my tongue: — 

"People of Arequipa ! People of South Amer- 
ica ! Listen to me this morning, for I am inspired. 
I have studied you, and have seen that you serve 
God with your lips only. But God is a Being 
of infinite common sense; He wants something 
more practical. Listen! You are filthy in your 
habits, but the real God hates filth; only be clean. 



210 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

and He asks for none of these forms. You de- 
voutly raise your hats when you pass a church; 
but God would sooner you installed a drainage 
system. The real God loves justice, rather than 
the celebration of saints' days; He would sooner 
your courts were pure and your saints forgotten. 

'The real God loves honesty. I say therefore 
to your politicians, work for the State, not for 
yourselves. Cease to take bribes, or to rob the 
treasury, and let nepotism cease. Take no credit 
for your suave manners or your fine clothes. In 
His eyes uprightness is more than a frock-coat, 
and a pure heart than a tall hat. 

''States of South America, pay your debts! 
Brand-new cathedrals weigh less with God than 
the rights of European bondholders; statues of 
Christ do not offset the ninepenny dollar. 

"As you fail in the eyes of God, you fail in 
those of man. You are making a mess of South 
America. This great country, won for you by 
men like Bolivar and San Martin, shows no 
progress in the things which really count. She 
is futile. Her name is a byword for bad govern- 
ment, dishonesty, and hypocrisy. I tell you that 
common sense is God's greatest attribute, and I 
adjure you to govem and develop South America 
on right lines. Be clean in your habits, honest in 
finance, just to all men. Be these things, people 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 211 

of South America, and I promise you the respect 
of the world, which to-day despises you in its 
heart/' 

Thus do I seem to have spoken in the cathedral 
of Arequipa. When I came to myself the music 
had ceased and the place was empty. 



CHAPTER IX 

"by the waters of Babylon" 

On a day that I remember, there was a throng 
in the bazaar of Delhi and traffic stood still. A 
procession of the Shiah sect was passing, and a 
tinselled model of the sacred shrine at Kerbela 
was borne aloft. Each ten steps it halted, while 
a leader and fanatic chorus, shouting, "Hassan, 
Hosein! Hassan, Hosein!" savagely beat their 
breasts till the sweat poured off and their ex- 
hausted natures all but gave way. Native police 
guarded these zealous expatiators and their 
shrine; to the Faithful of Delhi they are schis- 
matic and not to be tolerated. 

Just as great effect may spring from small 
cause, the Shiah religion sprang, if I can read 
human nature, from a matter of jealousy. There 
was a young cousin of Mahomet, named Ali, who 
took Fatima for chief wife, the Prophet's well- 
loved daughter, and became father of two sons. 
These youths, Hassan and Hosein, grew to be 
objects of love and reverence to the Mahometan 
world, and when their father Ali, as fourth suc- 
cessor to the Prophet, assumed the Khalifate it- 

212 



66 



BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON" 213 



self, they leapt to actual holiness — became sacro- 
sanct. 

''x\ha!" said then one day the families of 
Abubekr, Omar, and Othman, the dead Khalifs; 
"Aha!" echoed those who nursed secret aspira- 
tions, '"we see how things are shaping. We see 
the Khalifate passing utterly to this family, de- 
scending then from father to son. All the holi- 
ness, and power, and prestige in their hands — this 
will never do!" 

So those astute insiders put their heads to- 
gether, as astute insiders do to this day, and caused 
things to happen. Thus we see the deposition 
of Ali and his sons, and the succession passing 
from this family; we see their partizans seceding 
—outwardly on points of doctrine, inwardly just 
on personal issues — from the Faith; we see the 
rising of the shrines, and the cr}^stallization of the 
Ali tradition into a great Eastem religion. Hence 
came those breast-beatings, those shouts of "Has- 
san, Hosein!" in the bazaar of Delhi; hence, too, 
the disorganization of that city's tramways, which 
took place even as I watched. 

The Holy Family thus suffered temporal 
eclipse, and their graves are scattered through- 
out Arabia. Fatima and Hassan lie in Medina. 
Ali died by violence at distant Nejef, and is 
•buried there, and Hosein, acclaimed holiest of all, 
with his half-brother Abbas, lie where they fell 



214 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

fighting for the Khalifate, at Kerbela. But 
though dead their cause was not dead, and the 
followers of Ali came in time to be numbered 
by millions. North-East Arabia is Shiah, and 
there are many of the sect in India. Persia, to a 
man, has ever been Shiah. Her support meant 
everything; it endowed the sect with a subtlety 
of mind the Arabs never knew, and with an 
ecclesiastical architecture as delicate in imagina- 
tion as it is exquisite in colour. Dotted about 
the northem desert, where the Arabs live primi- 
tive as of yore, are the shrines of Samarra, Kadhi- 
main, Kufa, Nejef, and Kerbela. These, and I 
doubt not many more unknown to me, are the 
fruits of Persian genius — a genius which flowered 
richly, gave to these desert places its masterpieces^^ 
then went down in atrophy. 

Near the head of the Persian Gulf a great 
river flows into the sea. They call it Shatt-el- 
Arab. Date groves fringe the banks, behind 
which Arab husbandmen plough and reap in the 
low-lying fields, canoes skim the muddy waters, 
fishermen cast their nets into the teeming depths, 
and great dhows^ heavily laden, are pulled along 
the towing paths or sail by on favouring wind. 
This river may well be great ; the waters of Tigris 
and Euphrates have met eighty miles above, while 
those of the Karun, flowing south out of Persia, 
swell the main stream ere it reaches the Gulf. 



^BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON" 215 

Ocean steamers sail forty miles up Shatt-el- 
Arab to Busrah ; in the season one may see a dozen 
vessels lying here in the stream. This is export- 
point for a great hinterland; here the river 
steamers converge, and the laden dhows^ in their 
hundreds, come sailing down day and night. 

Busrah, with the river and the hinterland, is 
in Asiatic Turkey, a land that stretches from the 
Bosphorus to the Persian Gulf, from just south 
of Batoum to the confines of Aden. Not only a 
vast but a rich land this ; cut off the great southern 
deserts, and there yet remains, actual and latent, 
a splendid and fertile Empire. I was in Smyrna 
last autumn. They were packing the world's 
supply of figs. Here I am in Busrah, twelve hun- 
dred miles away, and they are putting up crea- 
tion's dates. Not only is Busrah metropolis of 
dates; it exports to America, where the tobacco 
interests hold a monopoly, nearly all the liquorice 
of the world. 

More arresting than liquorice, perhaps even 
than dates, are these big piles of barley on the 
banks, which Arab women and children are win- 
nowing. This must be grain from a thousand 
up-country patches, surplus grain for export, yet 
clearly of fine quality; if the haphazard Arab, 
watering with his goat-skin, can produce such 
grain, and this strong autumn sun not even shrivel 
it, modem irrigation has here an ideal field. 



216 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

With such a climate, such rivers, such soil, 
such fruits — and there are bitumen wells in the 
interior, a southem extension, it may be, of the 
Russian oil zone — Turkish Arabia might progress 
under the fairest auspices. I say might progress. 
It must rest at that; the Turks cannot run a 
modern Empire, their sway is futile from first to 
last. 

Turkey is doomed to disintegration — I believe 
in our lifetime. She cannot keep in the running. 
The Turk is quite a man in his way, but his sys- 
tem is the Mahometan system, and Mahometan 
finance is all wrong. Modern government is re- 
solved, ultimately, into one factor — sound finance. 
Where that obtains, as in England, Germany, 
Switzerland, Scandinavia, nations emerge and 
rank as the fittest. Where there is financial slack- 
ness the nations tend to sink. Where there is 
widespread financial corruption these nations must 
soon be at the mercy of the fit. In finance all 
the Mahometan Governments are corrupt, and all 
are futile. This is no new thing; but modern 
international trade and commerce do not tolerat^ 
such futility, and the fitter nations are preparing 
to take over these and govem in their stead. This 
I find seemly; not as moralist, but as evolutionist. 
In this cycle material progress is the keynote; the 
world's material development and the creation of 
wealth is the ideal we set before us. Another 



"BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON" 217 

cycle, the pendulum may swing, and Islam, with 
energy reborn, overthrow an effete Europe; but 
that to-day these nations, which lie corrupt and 
worn out at our feet, should be bolstered to a 
further futility is against common sense. 

These are reflections by the way. This is the 
broad River Tigris, some hundreds of miles from 
the Gulf. It is barren here, almost a desert, a 
great plain, and the river flows muddy and slug- 
gish. Here and there Bedouins are encamped, 
with their asses and their fat-tailed sheep; 
slovenly and squalid, nomads rather than tillers 
of the soil, these tribes live as their fathers lived 
three thousand years ago. Far to the right lie the 
Persian mountains, the border range; it is but 
early November, yet their tops are white with the 
first snow. 

We are now come into Mesopotamia, a biblical 
land. Yesterday we passed a blue dome by the 
river, rising in a grove of date palms. It was 
the well-attested grave of the prophet Ezra. To- 
night, a moonless night, and the boat tied up, I 
walked over the desert to the ruins of Ctesiphon, 
the palace of King Darius. My lantern was car- 
ried by a Chaldean. 

And here at last, after a tortuous waterway of 
nearly six hundred miles, is the city of Bagdad, 
lying on both banks, with its bridge of boats. 
Seen from afar, with the date palms and the 



218 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

slender minarets, this is the romantic city of the 
Khalifs. But do not pry into Bagdad. The 
mosques are lacking in glamour, the bazaars are 
tawdry, with the tawdry wares of Europe, and 
the streets, that are alleys, are slimy with the 
filth of seventy thousand Jews. Yet this may 
be said: one should not miss the bazaar of the 
two thousand coppersmiths, nor a certain vista 
on the river, when the moon comes sailing over 
the date palms. And but two leagues away there 
is Kadhimain — a mosque of burnished gold, a 
venerated shrine, where the pilgrims are kneeling; 
it is in such proximity that Bagdad lays her claims 
on Shiahdom. , 

Each morning, at three o'clock, from a cara- 
vanserai on the south bank of the river, a convoy 
of wagonettes leaves Bagdad for Kerbela. Each 
is drawn by eight mules, and holds some ten pil- 
grims, who sit shaded under coarse white canvas. 
This is a land of robber bands ; on one vehicle in 
three or four a soldier sits beside the driver, his 
rifle across his knees. If the day promises dust 
there is much manoeuvring, many a hand-gallop 
in the dark for first place; but a European of 
condition, travelling with his consulate's qawass^ 
will be given precedence. 

So we travel through chill dark hours, and 
when the sun rises our cavalcade is already far 
out on the desert. Another hour, and a village 



"BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON" 219 

is reached, a changing station for the mules. From 
its humble coffee-shop an attendant is summoned, 
who brings me, lying in the sun, cups of Mocha 
from the Yemen, whose fragrance and strength, 
blending with the buoyant desert air, shoot 
through my nerves in a thousand harmonies. 

These pilgrims who drive are the moneyed 
folks. It is true that a seat to Kerbela costs less 
than a medjidie — a matter of three shillings — but 
how many there are tread this desert track with 
less ! Here are some, with their women, who ride 
asses. These, returning, bestride emaciated horses. 
This considerable band, who rally round a green 
flag, go all afoot. There are Arabs, and Indians, 
and many, many Persians. There are the sick, 
too, and the old. If it please Allah that they lie 
down in holy Kerbela — it is well ; if it please Him 
that they waken not again — it is still well. 

Presently we reach the village of Musseyib, 
and the Euphrates, which is spanned by a bridge 
of boats. We are fifty miles from Bagdad, and 
the desert we have crossed is the richest soil in 
the world, virgin now for centuries, awaiting the 
irrigation that shall make it a garden. Four 
miles from here French engineers built a barrage; 
but Turkey was in control, and it was never fin- 
ished. To-day a great British firm carries the 
work through on a new site. But the fat Turks 
are waiting. They smack their lips. From this 



220 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

coming fertility they are like to wring a princely 
baksheesh. 

Twenty miles south of Euphrates holy Ker- 
bela is seen on the plain — a town among date 
palms. As it draws to evening the mosques of 
Hosein and Abbas stand out clearly, their golden- 
tipped minarets catching the sun ; as we drive past 
these the muezzins have already ascended, and are 
calling to the evening prayer. Night falls like a 
thunderbolt. 

The Shiah is a fanatic. Inspired by the mulldks^ 
he denies approach to his mosques, and for the 
sacred places of Kerbela fears desecration most 
of all. As I passed next day through the bazaars 
that lie adjacent to the two shrines, I stood now 
at this gate, now at that, viewing the spacious 
courtyards, gazing upon the walls of mosaic, the 
wide Koranic scrolls, the high old doors, upon 
those who prayed, and those who sold, and upon 
a great human spectacle. At my side a soldier 
stood and two consular guards in uniform, so this 
was permitted me ; without them I had found but 
poor welcome in Kerbela. 

A whispering now took place. There was a 
stealthy transfer of silver, and I was led up on 
to two roofs, whence the golden domes and the 
minarets stood out in their glory, and the date 
palms that encircle Kerbela, and the long horizon 
of the desert. 



«BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON" 221 

Later, I stood before the grain booths, where 
naked men, slaves in all but name, plied the 
heavy grinding mills. An overladen ass dropped 
at my feet, and I became aware of horses and 
asses and camels suffering from grievous sores. 
Of men, tool Lepers sat there, and the blind, 
and the epileptic, and the abject, while the awful 
stench of cesspools stole into the sacred courtyards. 

In the afternoon I walked alone to the out- 
skirts. There were wells here and patches of 
irrigation. Beyond, at the verge of the desert, 
blue domes stood out, and among the many tombs 
an Arab funeral was wending. 

Before sunset I returned to the bazaar, to a 
caravanserai of the Indians that stood near to the 
mosque of Abbas. Out on the roof a group of 
pilgrims stood waiting, and with these I spoke. 

"I," said one. ''come from Karachi." 

^'And I from Porebunder." 

"I am from Ujjain. \\t stay here forty days, 
and at Nejef forty. On our way home we shall 
play at Kadhimain, and at the tomb of Ezra." 

Small rooms were perched about the roof. The 
doors of one were thrown open, and a venerable 
Indian within, noting that the sun was about to 
sink, spread his carpet towards Mecca, and began 
a solemn chant. On the roofs around figures 
were now kneeling, and all the hubbub from the 
mosque's courtyard was suddenly hushed. At this 



222 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

moment, as the muezzin came out on the golden 
minaret, a thousand cloud-flakes, floating in the 
western sky, became shot with rose, a tremulous 
evanescence, which yet lay on them till the last 
notes of the call had died away. 

That night I lay awake in Kerbela, and as I 
lay, long before the dawn, an Arab's voice rose 
in a chant. Wrapping myself round, I went 
out on the roof. But the voice was deeply myste- 
rious. It came I knew not whence. It rose thin 
and high, it passed over Kerbela, and the date 
palms, and the tombs, and I think it reached some 
wandering holy man, who stood a listener that 
night, far out in the desert of Arabia. 

On the northern bank of Euphrates, a short 
day's ride from Kerbela, are the vast, shapeless 
mounds where an ancient city stood. At a dis- 
tance of two miles another mound, solitary and 
high, would seem to denote some huge monument 
of antiquity. This ancient city was Babylon; 
that monument, no other than the Towel of 
Babel. 

There are date palms down by the river, and 
in a house among the palms four German scientists 
sit at the midday meal. They receive me with 
open arms, and I imbibe coffee and much archae- 
ology. 

The Tower of Babel, a hundred yards square 



6i 



BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON" 223 



at the base, as like as not was pyramidal. It is 
not even certain that it rose two hundred feet. 
But Babylon, whose hewn records date from script 
back to hieroglyph, from hieroglyph back to the 
very dawn of things, was a city indeed — a city for 
some thousands of years. 

And it was great. I wandered for a square 
mile, for perhaps two miles; I saw where they 
excavate now, and where the great uncouth 
mounds date back untouched to b.c. Blue pigeons 
flew from the caves, and a jackal stole from his 
lair in the ruins. 

These blond-bearded scientists, financed by the 
German Oriental Society, are minute in detail, 
intensely thorough. Yet fortune does not greatly 
favour them. There is no rock in this region; 
Babylon was therefore built of brick, much of it 
unburnt brick, and it has melted. How easily 
might it have been a Timgad, a Palmyra, a Baal- 
bec, a Persepolis, and remains — a melted Babylon ! 

Still, there is Nebuchadnezzar's gateway of 
victory, where the plaster reliefs of animals, laid 
over the bricks, are in fine preservation, and there 
is a great stone bull, and the ground-plan of the 
palace, and all the archsological minutise in 
which the Germans revel. And there is hope; a 
turn of the spade, any day, may lead to a great 
find. . 

I am soon to depart, and the visitors' book lies 



224 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

before me — Babylon requests my p.p.c. ! There 
are able sketches in this book, verses too and a 
Frenchman has penned clever words. My mood 
calls for a diatribe : — 

**What is progress? Do we not mistake change for progress, 
greater complexity of life for real advance? Human nature 
does not vary. We are, for good or evil, as the men of 
Babylon were. In ethics, Napoleon was as Nebuchadnezzar. 

"These hieroglyphs indicate crude scholarship in the few, 
ignorance in the many. Is the world better to-day when all 
men read and write? Your tenth man can thrive on learning; 
your other nine become anarchists, socialists, spiritualists, senti- 
mentalists — wayfarers along a thousand paths of ignorance. 
These are the hewers of wood and the drawers of water; 
they should be left to hew and draw. 

"Democracy and flabbiness drag Europe to the abyss. So 
she will continue, till a new era shall dawn and the world 
revive to the touch of the ^overman.* I commend Nietzsche 
to you." 

I came out at sunrise to-day, the Germans 
being already up and about. I was bound for 
the wide world, for the future; their minds lay 
with Babylon and the past. In the date palms 
a bird was singing of youth and joy, and all the 
air was buoyant. A flight of pigeons passed, head- 
ing for the mounds of Babel. A young Arab went 
by driving donkeys, and herdsmen were moving 
their sheep across the dried-up channel of the 
river. The present channel of Euphrates has 
shifted from here, and this ancient bed awaits the 
barrage ere it will flow again. Thus it was I did 
not see the waters of Babylon. 



CHAPTER X 



A GRAVE IN SAMOA 



On a day in 1898 I landed at Apia. It was 
tropical high noon, and the village slept beneath 
its trees — all but slept; in a nightdress, at the 
door of her liquor saloon, stood a white woman. 

I drank lime-juice at her bar, waiting while 
she refreshed, at my expense, with a bottle of 
beer; then, ''Can you direct me to Vailima?" I 
said. As she pointed, a young native girl ap- 
peared, with hibiscus in her hair, and for the 
payment of sixpence became guide. Walking a 
mile, or it may have been two, we left the road, 
and passing through coco-nut groves came to 
Vailima. The house stood deserted. Windows 
were broken, furniture had been taken away, and 
the dust lay thick. In the spacious library, where 
Stevenson had written, the books remained, among 
them a large French collection ; but many lay torn 
on the floor, stripped of the autograph, and damp 
was fast claiming the rest. 

An old native appeared, the caretaker, who told 
me house and property were for sale; he men- 
tioned the sum of two thousand pounds, and I sat 

225 



226 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

on the floor among the torn books and did some 
hard thinking. It would have meant half my 
capital, and Scotch caution carried the day; but 
that library floor haunted me for years. A Ger- 
man was to buy Vailima. 

Leaving the house, and alone, I followed the 
track through the forest and up the mountain — 
the track cut for Stevenson's funeral. The long, 
weary ascent to the grave exhausted me. I had 
received a sunstroke that equatorial morning, and 
for an hour I lay over the grave-stone oblivious 
of my surroundings, lost to the outer world. 

:^ ^ 5^ ^ :K 5K 

My eyes are shut tight. My forehead presses 
something hard, and there is terrible buzzing in 
my head — ^but I know where I am. I am swim- 
ming in the sea. Over there the figure of a widow 
rises and falls on the swell. 

''Madam !" I cry across, ''your husband's library 
is become mouldy," but at that she dives right 
under, and is gone. 

How my head aches! I want to think of 
Stevenson, yet am obsessed by Dolores. . . . 
There is something about a grave. . . . Let me 
think. ... If the gods 

"Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores 
The myrtle to death," 

then what about the English cemetery at Rome? 
It is all cypress. Shelley is lying there, with 



A GRAVE IN SAMOA 227 

Trelawney and the elect, and Keats by himself 
in a lonely little grove. I went from there, I 
mind me, to the church in Ara-Coeli, where Gib- 
bon was sitting when it came to him to write 
the ''Roman Empire," finished twenty years later 
at Lausanne — ^but I don't think anything came 
to me. Yes, I remember! I decided that the 
"Last Supper" on the refectory wall at Milan 
was greater than any work of Raphael or Michel- 
angelo. One was always told they come first. 
Ruskin, who had nothing to say, and said it with 
great charm, put that about, but I've learned for 
myself since then. It wasn't even Leonardo; it 
was that time in Madrid when I walked into the 
big Velasquez room, and stood stock still for ten 
minutes. Here was the greatest painter in the 
world ! I knew it before I moved again. . . . 

(I feel sick as a dog. Patterns form and re- 
form in my eyeballs.) . . . There was Murillo 
next door, with his fifty assorted altar-pieces. 
Madonnas and saints; a colourist certainly, but a 
harper on one string. "Murillo, my lad," I re- 
member saying, "you fall a bit flat; all you Pope- 
pleasers do. You are damned monotonous, if you 
must know." 

Now turn to Velasquez. What did he care 
for tradition? "You can take it or leave it" was 
his way with the cardinals. Painting dwarfs, 



228 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

beggars, topers, cities, kings, courtiers, children, 
animals — he saw all things dead true and painted 
as he saw. Master of simplicity, master of light, 
utterly versatile, transmitter of intellect — ^not of 
beauty, he stands head and shoulders above them 
all. Look at that "JEsop" ! it is the picture of 
the world. ''^Esop" and "Don Quixote," greatest 
of pictures and of books; and to come nearly 
together out of priestridden, ghoulish Spain ! 

The Velasquez of these days, master-handler 
of the painter's all-in-all — light — is one Whistler, 
a cantankerous eccentric, whom critics deride and 
men laugh at, whom Carlyle, who sat to him, 
called the most absurd creature on the face of the 
earth. JHe may be, but, take it from me, this 
unpleasant person is going down to immortality. 
Picture the scene a score of years hence. Whistler, 
sipping an absinthe, is seated in the Elysian Fields. 
He listens to heated remarks by Rossetti, on the 
fat women of Rubens and their tendency to wal- 
low. To them enters a boy from the "Mundane 
Messages Company." 

"Are you Mr. Whistler?" he asks. 

"My name is Whistler." 

"Well, there's a message up to say they think 
Velasky, Remnant, and you the greatest school of 
painters." 

Fixing his eyes intently on the Attomey- 



^A GRAVE IN SAMOA 229 

General ^ — I mean the messenger — Whistler will 
say acidly, "I presume you mean Velasquez and 
Rembrandt." And then thoughtfully to Rossetti, 
*'But why drag them in? No, boy, there is no 
tip!" 

. . . How my head goes round I That widow 
is swimming there again. 

^^Madam!" 

She hails me: '1 know what you would say — 
the mouldy library, n'est-ce pas? . . . The in- 
evitable ?nust'' 

''Gilbert's wittiest pun I Then you are not 
utterly heartless?" But she is gone again. . . . 

How happy Stevenson was that night in the 
wood, up in the French hills, when he rose and 
made chocolate and heard the turn of the night I 
Surely it was only the other day, and yet he has 
lain here, in the forest, for four years. I wonder 
how ''Weir of Hermiston" was to have ended? 
. . . And "St. Ives" ? . . . That marvellous first 
chapter of the "Ebb Tide" ! . . . 

Why did he never use Austrailia? He was 
there, once, at least. All that material, too! Did 
the bushrangers leave him cold? Did he never 
hear of Fisher's Ghost? Nor of the Bunyip — 
that ghastly thing, half-calf, half-man, that is said 
to raise its head from the depth of some inland 

* This strange allusion would seem to be connected with the 
trial Whistler v. Ruskin, described in Whistler's book "The 
Gentle Art of Making Enemies" (p. lo). 



230 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

pool at sundown? Did he never meet a certain 
police magistrate of Albury? I can fancy such 
one saying, "Mr. Stevenson, our best romances 
are 'Geoffrey Hamlyn,' Tor the Term of His 
Natural Life,' 'Moondyne,' and — ahem! 'Rob- 
bery under Arms.' Read these, I beg of you, and 
such other material as I shall delightedly put be- 
fore you, then write, and make Steve Hart, Gaird- 
ner, or the Jew Boy immortal." ... 

The ''Bulletin" ! Why was he never asked to 
edit the "Red Page?" Or was he asked, and did 
he refuse? He could have done the work from 
Vailima. Perhaps he didn't like the "Bulletin"; 
there are many very respectable people who do 
not. But Stevenson was not very respectable — 
he was great. To me, it is the cleverest paper 
printed, its editor the ablest journalist of his time. 
On the Australian national idea it is sound as a 
bell — inspired, one might say. But it has faults. 
It exposes and pulls down shams, but does not 
always build again. A merciless critic of men's 
errors, it rarely approves their virtues. Of the 
rich it is unsparing, showing thus a lack of propor- 
tion. The rich are not worse than the poor; they 
never were. 

"Hearts just as pure and fair 
May beat in Belgrave Square, 
As in the lowly air 
Of Seven Dials!" 



A GRAVE IN SAMOA «31 

The ''Bulletin" must grow as a force, for it is 
desperately clever. It has more than half made 
Australian poetry. Pegasus there was a brumby^ 
peeping shyly from the ''bush." The ''Bulletin" 
tames him by kindness; but as yet he does not 
amble, a lady's hack, along Pitt Street. . . . 

No horse for me! I am lying giddy some- 
where. . . . My eyes are still shut tight; crysfaX- 
lizations were forming on the retina, till an 
arabesque appeared on a blood-red ground. It 
is the scroll of Ali. It is the shawl flung over 
Fatima, w^hen father gave his consent! Beware 
of jealousy, Ali! There were those who . . . 

Where was I? . . . Adam Lindsay Gordon, 
gentleman jockey, set the pace in poetr}\ English 
by birth, he died by his own hand, laureate of 
Australia. He wrote of horses and racing — things 
that bore me. I like best his poem to one of the 
explorers. Wills or Leichardt, dying of thirst in 
the Never-Never. I can see the desert, and the 
"blood-red sunset, the tracks of the doomed man, 
and all the shadowy forms of the night : — 

**With the pistol clenched in his failing hand, 
With the death mist spread o'er his fading eyes, 
He saw the sun go down on the sand, 
And he slept and never saw it rise. 

Twas well ; he toiled till his task was done, 
Constant and calm in his latest throe; 
The storm was weathered, the battle was won, 
When he went, my friends, where we all must go. 



232 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

No tears are needed — fill out the wine, 
Let the goblets clash, and the grape juice flow; 
Ho! pledge me a death-drink, comrade mine, 
To a brave man gone where we all must go." 

Then there is Brunton Stevens, of the Queens- 
land Civil Service. His "Convict Once" is the 
most sustained poem written in Australia; it has 
a true ''atmosphere." He is a poet of distinction, 
but one born in England. 

Paterson, the ''bard of the bush," set all Aus- 
tralia talking of "The Man from Snowy River." 
He is the new laureate; I give him thanks for 
"Black Swans," "Kiley's Hill," "Saltbush Bill,'' 
"In the Droving Days." Paterson, and all these 
Australian poets, reek of the "bush." That is 
their glory, for the "bush" is Australia. Haven't 
I known that since I was fourteen? 

**As I lie at rest on a patch of clover, 

In the Western Park when the day is done, 
I watch as the wild black swans fly over, 

With their phalanx turned to the sinking sun; 
And I hear the clang of their leader crying 
To a lagging mate in the rearward flying. 
And they fade away in the darkness dying, 
Where the stars are mustering one by one." 

I have seen the swans flying in their phalanx; 
I have heard the clanging too. I was steeped in 
the "bush" ere I knew Africa. 

It's funny, I can't open my eyes; — ^but I re- 
member things. . . . 

"Kiley's Hill" is a gem. It is a deserted bush 
farm Paterson tells of, and he ends thus : — 



A GRAVE IN SAMOA 233 

'Where are the children that throve and grew 
In the old homestead in days gone by? 
One is away on the far Barcoo, 
Watching his cattle the long year through, 
Watching them starve in the droughts and die. 

One in the town where all cares are rife, 
Weary with troubles that cramp and kill. 
Fain would be done with the restless strife, 
Fain would go back to the old bush life, 
Back to the shadow of Kiley's Hill. 

One is away on the roving quest, 

Seeking his share of the golden spoil, 

Out in the wastes of the trackless west, 

Wandering ever he gives the best 

Of his years and strength to the hopeless toil. 

What of the parents? That unkempt mound 
Shows where they slumber united still; 
Rough is their grave, but they sleep as sound 
Out on the range as on holv ground, 
Under the shadow of Kiley's Hill." 

Damn my head! ... I think I want to cry. 
. . . After Paterson came Victor Daley, and there 
is a poem by him — ''His Mate" — I have read, 
oh! SO many times. Again we are out in the 
far-back of New South Wales — out on the salt- 
bush plains, in the drought : — 

"No faintest sign of distant water glimmered, 
The aching eye to bless; 
The far horizon like a sword's edge shimmered, 
Keen, gleaming, pitiless.'* 

Presently there appears, dragging himself 
wearily, a swagman, old and dead beat. As we 
follow his halting steps, we feel the desolation, 
the scorching of the sun, and the slow passing 
of the long day. And when the sun is sinking 



234 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

low, he comes suddenly on — the Stranger. He 
is lying under a clump of salt-bush, dying of 
thirst, and the broken old swagman kneels to give 
him the last of his water: — 

"Behold a miracle! For when that Other 
Had drunk, he rose and cried, 
*Let us pass on.' As brother might with brother, 
So went they, side by side." 

But old Andy, the swagman, is done for. As 
they travel, in the early hours of that night, the 
stars reel, and he falls in his tracks : — 

"Beneath the moonlight, with the weird, wan glitter 
Of salt-bush all around, 
He lay. . . ." 

It is the night of Christmas Eve, and this kindly 
old rip, for whom Christmas Days of vinous de- 
bauchery will not again dawn, hands his "cheque" 
to the Stranger. 

"To-morrow's Christmas Day: God knows where I'll be 
By then — I don't; but you, 
Away from this death's hole should many a mile be, 
At Blake's, on the Barcoo." 

"Nay!" says the Stranger, with a smile. "You 
and I are mates. We will spend our Christmas 
together — in heaven." 

A grim jest, thinks the old man; yet he accepts 
the wager, dying in the very act. 

"5t. Peter stood at the celestial portal, 
Gazing down gulfs of air. . . ." 



A GRAVE IN SAMOA 235 

When old Andy's spirit happens along, greatly 
daring : — 

"I want my mate !" 

Behind those doors lay the "glory unbeholden." 
Angelic hosts were bursting into the anthem of 
the Nativity, and Peter at the wicket chafed to 
be gone. 

'The wrong gate!" he cried, and this humble 
old spirit, with no wit of cockcrowing, bows to 
fate. 

Heed him not, old man ! A greater than Peter 
has given you rendezvous. See! 

*'The gates flew wide. The Glory unbeholden 
Of mortal eyes was there. 
He gazed — this trembling sinner — at the golden 
Thrones, terrible and fair, 

And shuddered. Then down through the living splendour 

Came One unto the gate, 
Who said, with outspread hands, in accents tender, 

*Andy! / am your mate!*'* 

Let me think if I can. . . . There was that 
other sweet singer of Australia — a woman, divine 
of voice, strong of brain. We talked of melody, 
and I told her the miserere in "Trovatore" excelled 
all. She did not gainsay; but why should she? 
my ear for melody is quite acute. Master in this, 
the palm must rest with Verdi; deny me his 
miserere^ and I shall win you over with the in- 
cantation of the priestess in "Aida." Once I slept 
at Assouan, on that island in the Nile, and at 



2S6 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

dead of night awoke. It was not the river I heard, 
not 

". . . the long ripple washing in the reeds," 

but the thin, silvery notes of the violins, prelude 
to the third act, that portray this very lapping 
of immemorial Nile at its banks. Thafs genius; 
but ''Aida" is all genius; was it not written to 
order — the greatest work in that galley. Verdi 
writes, Ismail pays, and we buy the Canal shares 
— ^so runs the world away. 

All the operas are surging in me now. An 
immense orchestra has tuned up in my head; it 
is playing in an unknown key, and the conductor 
is rapping. Now for a ''thunder of lyres." . . . 
That is the chant and barcarolle from "Die 
Stumme," the first I ever heard, back in the Stutt- 
gart days, when Anton Schott rode on his white 
horse. . . . Incomparable Plangon ! It was surely 
your great bass that started the serenade to Mar- 
guerite. . . . Yet why should I finish it? . • . 
''Till she have a ring. "Ha! ha! haP' Poor girl; 
the preenings of an elderly Schwerlein cost her 
that. . . . 

I was in Venice four months ago. They played 
*'Boheme'' there, a new opera. There is a time 
when snow falls on the stage, and soft, white snow 
was falling in the music. That falling will live 
in my brain — that, and a bell that chimed at 
Malamocco, across the lagoon. . . . 



A GRAVE IN SAMOA 237 

Wagner died in Venice, too. That night, I like 
to think, a storm-cloud burst in the North, by the 
shores of the Baltic Sea, and amid the thunder 
and the spindrift aerial trumpets proclaimed a 
motiv. Two ravens flew out of the mist. Credu- 
lous listeners swore to the stately Walhalla chords, 
others to the rushing of unseen squadrons, and the 
sturdy shouts of Walkilren^ convoying, as of 
ancient wont, a dead hero. They lied! The 
trumpets were bidden play for no victor, but for 
a soul storm-tossed and world-weary\ It was the 
haunting cry of the Dutchman rose that night 
above the tempest, as Wagner passed. 

I hold him Germany's greatest. Where can 
she point to a brain of like calibre, to a subtlety 
so profound? Has Wagner been fathomed? Has 
the intellect put into the "Ring," into the "fire- 
music" — into "Siegfried," that pinnacle in the 
world of art — yet been gauged? 

Where am I? . . . Lying on Stevenson's 
grave, with a touch of the sun . • • I think I'm 
better! 

I rose to my feet. My eyes and brain now 
took in all the beauty of the scene : — 

"I saw 
Here no sepulchre built, 
In the laurell'd rock, o'er the blue 
Naples Bay, for a sweet 
Tender Virgil ! No tomb 
On Ravenna sands, in the shade 



238 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

Of Ravenna pines, for a high 
Austere Dante! No grave 
By the Avon side, in the bright 
Stratford meadows, for thee 
Shakespeare! . . ." 

For this grave lies in a clearing on the hill- 
top, on whose sides the tropical forest grows rich 
and luxuriant. Far down below are coco-nut 
groves, beyond them the roofs of Apia, the blue 
sea, and the white line of the surf as it beats the 
reef. I plucked tropical ferns, that I laid at his 
head and his feet ; then I read the raised lettering 
of his charming farewell. Feeling my own man 
again, I started down the mountain. 



CHAPTER XI 

MINE OWN PEOPLE 

Today we are to scour the countryside of Eng- 
land. Springtime is here, so that the hedges are 
white with their May, and wild violets grow in 
their shade; in the woods of oak and elm and 
beech, primroses and wild hyacinths are out, and 
the meadows are yellow with cowslips. You will 
find no countr}^side in the world so green, nowhere 
a finer soil, nowhere sweeter grass ; and because of 
these things, nowhere such a quality of food. Eng- 
land's beef and mutton and venison, her poultry 
and game, cannot anywhere be equalled. Her 
field crops are of the best. Her fruits and veg- 
etables of a rarer flavour. The bread, the milk, 
the cheese, the bacon, the beer of a fineness un- 
known in the South, and in no other coastal waters 
are such fish. 

These fine foods have been the very foundation 
stones of our race, and have combined, in times 
gone by, to the building up of prodigious men: 
to the building of Newton, profoundest of the 
world's intellects; to the building of Shakespeare, 
poet of all time ; to the making of Cromwell, who 

239 



240 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

paved the way for your freedom and mine ; to the 
making of Nelson, who sealed our race for ever 
to the sea; to the making of Harvey, whose dis- 
coveries about the blood came full-fledged, perfect 
from his brain, and many, many more of the 
greatest of mankind. 

A race so singled out by Nature, so exalted by 
its great men, was destined to burst its island 
barriers, to grasp at what the outer world had to 
offer; and for some hundreds of years now, daring 
and determined Britons have sailed forth to dis- 
cover, to annex, to consolidate. 

They sailed West, and Virginia and Pennsyl- 
vania were peopled bj^ them. North America was 
launched on British beef and beer. Newfound- 
land was annexed, that bleak island of morass and 
stunted forest, and later Canada, a kindlier region, 
where, in autumn, they saw the maple forests 
tuming to gold. Down in the western tropics they 
first annexed Barbados; taking, as time went by, 
Jamaica, Belize and other colonies from the 
Spaniards; Trinidad, St. Lucia and many more 
islands from the French; Demerara from the 
Dutch; building up a Caribbean heritage. 

But it was the East where their destiny lay. 
It was to the East — especially to India — that the 
thoughts, the imagination of great men in England 
used to turn; and to the East the adventurous 
sooner or later set forth. The way thither by sea 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 241 

lay South; and so the annexing of the Cape of 
Good Hope came about. Out of it were to grow 
possessions all over Africa; but its first and only- 
value was that of a harbour — the harbour of 
Table Bay — on the direct sailing route to India. 

British merchants were in India before the year 
1600, and soon our ships, carrying traders and 
explorers, were at home in the Persian Gulf, along 
the coasts of Arabia, in the Red Sea, and down 
to the island of cloves — Zanzibar. In 1640, 
Madras was founded, the first annexation in the 
East, and soldiers and administrators, the first in 
a long and distinguished line, began to arrive from. 
England. Calcutta was founded. Ceylon was to 
come our way later. Bencoolen, in Sumatra, was 
taken, Penang was ours, and our traders and 
explorers passed down the Straits and entered the 
China Seas. Later, under the lead of great Cap- 
tain Cook, they were to take xAustralia, Tasmania, 
New Zealand, and half the islands in the South 
Pacific. 

But always India lay at the back of our mind. 
All the glamour, the imagination, the vague East- 
ward longing centred there. As our grip upon 
her strengthened, so that instinct strengthened, 
telling us our ways lay together — the way of the 
masterful, grasping, full-blooded islanders of the 
cold, and the way of the sun-shrivelled, selfless, 
mystical men of the heat — for better or for worse. 



242 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

These instincts and longings to grasp the world, 
and especially to root ourselves in India, were 
soon to be f ocussed in one of those prodigious 
men of ours. 

Consider his story. Robert Clive, a boy of 
eighteen, lands in Madras. He has come out a 
clerk to the East India Company. He is un- 
known; has no money, no prospects. His duties 
are mere routine; his future, saving the un- 
expected, must be the trivial round. Now, what 
could the unexpected be? Hah! The French 
are installed near by, at Pondicherry. Their 
prestige is fast rising, and that of the British, in 
the eyes of the natives, is going down. The 
French, and the native princes who encourage 
them, must be wiped out if the British are ever 
to control in India. And so there comes fighting 
before Pondicherry, opportunity, and the young 
civilian turns out a bom leader. He is now placed 
in charge of certain attacks, succeeds, gains his 
commission, goes on succeeding, and before long 
is Commandant of Madras, conqueror of the great 
Dupleix, victorious all along the line. The fight- 
ing, against both the French and the natives, 
waxes fiercer. The young leader performs mir- 
acles of daring, and is worshipped by his men. 
He is undefeated; he has raised British prestige 
in all India. Now in poor health, he returns for 
awhile to England. 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 243 

The years pass. It is now 1756, and Suraj-ud- 
dauleh, Nawab of Bengal, perpetrates upon the 
British at Calcutta the massacre of the Black 
Hole. Heavy punishment awaits him, and be- 
hind his punishment lie great political issues. A 
big man is needed for the work, and Colonel Rob- 
ert Clive, aged 30, comes sailing up from Madras. 
He takes the field with 1,000 Europeans — ^more 
than he has led in all his career — and 2,000 na- 
tives, and marches to where the Nawab awaits 
him with 50,000 men. 

They meet at Plassey, a hundred miles from 
Calcutta, and the fate of India lies in the melting 
pot. A council of war is held under some mango 
trees. Clive tells his officers that he has bought 
Mir Jafir, the Nawab's general, promising him, 
if he will desert at the critical moment, his mas- 
ter's shoes. ''Will he stay bought? Are we 
strong enough to attack without him?" asks Clive. 
The gallant Eyre Coote, second in command, is 
all for attack; but not until Mir Jafir's message 
comes does Clive make final decision. 

I journeyed to Plassey, and stood out on the 
lonely plain ; with a chart, and the cement cairns 
now placed by the Indian Government, I recon- 
structed the battle. I saw where Clive's force 
had lain entrenched, where the French gunners 
of the enemy had stood, and where the Nawab's 
own troops were drawn up. Nearest of all, and 



244 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

right on our flank, had been the army of Mir 
Jafir. But that crafty person was watching 
events. He saw that Clive, as ever, was gaining 
ground; and repairing to the Nawab's tent dur- 
ing the battle, put so great a fear in that ruler's 
heart that he fled the field. 

The immense prestige of Clive, his weird mili- 
tary skill, and his cunning, won us Plassey. He 
had played the oriental at his own game, and 
beaten him. Bengal, the heart and the core of 
India, was ours for the taking. The Black Hole 
of Calcutta was avenged; the little Madras clerk 
had entered on immortality. 

:)c ^ ^ :}c :{c ^ 

A roll of drums in the darkness. Quick cries 
of command. The tramp of many men. As I 
spring from my bed the bagpipes skirl, and a 
Gurkha regiment goes marching by. It is four 
o'clock in the morning; the month December, the 
year 1911; today, after two hundred and fifty 
years, an Emperor again enters Delhi. 

A British battalion comes marching in the dark- 
ness; then in succession come Sikhs, Rajputs, Brit- 
ish and native cavalry, more battalions of the line, 
batteries of guns. The music is continuous now, 
with distant bugle calls, hoarsely shouted orders, 
and a steady tramping; by sun up, down this one 
road, forty regiments have gone to meet the Em- 
peror. 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 245 

Presently I come to the Maidan. Lines of 
soldiers guard the royal route, and there seethes 
behind them a white throng, turbanned in many 
hues. Tens of thousands stream out of Delhi, 
cluster on the great stairway of Jama Masjid, 
swarm upon every roof; and, where Chandi 
Chowk, the street of the jewellers, enters the city, 
become wedged and immovable. 

A general, white-plumed, with his aides, gallops 
by in a final survey. A governor's carriage and 
four, with the scarlet and gold liveries, and 
princes with their retinues pass down to the cita- 
del. A million natives stand expectant. The 
British, some thousands in number, have taken 
their stance, and within the fort — the red-sand- 
stone citadel of Shah Jahan — the high officials 
of India and all the ruling princes await the royal 
train. 

A gun booms the first salute. While it yet re- 
verberates a hoarse cry passes, is taken up again 
and again, and as seventy thousand soldiers stand 
to attention, the royal standard floats out over 
the fort. 

The Emperor has arrived. Within the royal 
shamiana he is receiving homage from the princes. 
Some one hundred and forty prepare to follow 
him through the city, and only proud Udaipur, 
whose ancestor cursed Akbar, and Akbar's Delhi 



246 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

for ever, will skirt the city, and meet him at the 
durbar beyond. 

The salute swells to one hundred and one guns, 
and when it merges into rifle fusillades, all eyes 
turn to the fort. In the gateway, between the 
stone elephants, a horseman appears, a herald 
trumpeter. A troop of cavalry, with their music, 
follow him out across the Maidan, and so the 
long procession begins. After many squadrons, 
drive the Commissioner of Delhi, the Chief C(Mi- 
missioners of Provinces, the Lieutenant Gover- 
nors, the Governors of Madras and Bombay with 
their escorts. A fanfare is heard, and the head 
of the King's procession emerges. Half a mile of 
cavalry seem to defile, and after them Delhi Her- 
ald comes riding, the royal standard bearer and 
the trumpeters. Then a plumed cavalcade, all 
scarlet and gold, with blue sashes rides past, and 
in the middle the Emperor, with his viceroy, his 
generals, his suite, and in his immediate train 
great princes like Gwalior and Bikanir. 

He goes by to deep British cheers. His Indian 
people, who do not cheer, receive him with im- 
mense waving, and thousands, who even stand im- 
mobile, will carry this moment with them to the 
grave. Ere he has entered Chandi Chowk, come 
the princes. At their head, four white horses to 
his chariot, rides the new Nizam, prince of Hyder- 
abad, ruler over eleven millions. His black robe 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 247 

is buttoned at the neck, his turban and aigrette are 
yellow. The British Resident sits by his side, his 
minister of state opposite; his Arab bodyguard 
ride behind. 

The Gaekwar rides next, a thick-set Mahratta. 
In white muslin, with squat red turban, he makes 
small appeal to the eye ; yet he is the second prince 
in India, and a man to reckon with. He is fol- 
lowed by the Maharajah of Mysore. Young, 
magnificent, and a militant Hindu, he is wearing 
gigantic emeralds, and the crowd receives him 
well. Hard upon him there follows a prince ly- 
ing back on the cushions. He is the ruler of 
Kashmir, an oldish man, exhausted, and drugged, 
it may be, for this day with opium. His stal- 
wart bodyguard follow. 

After these, as is the precedent of India, come 
the princes of Rajputana. At their head today is 
old Jaipur, and his bodyguard ride in coats of 
mail. Later, at the durbar^ he was to kiss his 
jewelled sword, lay it reverently at the Sover- 
eign's feet, and I saw no courtlier act in Delhi. 
Udaipur, the first Rajput, as we know, is not here. 
Bikanir rides behind the King. The boy Jodhpur 
is with the cadet escort; but their chariots pass, 
their caparisoned, led horses, their camels, their 
riflemen, their musicians, together with the Ma- 
harajahs of Boondi and Kotah and Jaisalmer, 
and all that is gallant in Rajputana. 



248 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

The procession of the princes defiles for two 
hours. In this vast India exist many, many di- 
verse races, and their chiefs are here today from 
the uttermost confines. Here pass statesmen, men 
of affairs, great social figures, escorted by their 
modern troops, and Western bands of music ; and 
here, in their due precedence, pass outer barbar- 
ians, followed by archers and spearmen in coats 
of mail, or by men beating gongs. Travancore 
passes, of great lineage, suzerain of many Brah- 
mins, who goes at four o'clock each morning to 
his devotions; Kolhapur, the Mahratta, of the 
blood of great Sivaji; Patiala, the Sikh, whose 
four prancing steeds put all others to shame; Pud- 
ukota, English gentleman and subtle bridge- 
player; Newanagar, in a silver coach, puffed out 
in pink silk, greatest batsman in a generation of 
cricket; the consumptive boy Cooch — Behar, 
death already in his face; the veiled Begum of 
Bhopal, the one woman among them; and after 
them wild looking Pathans from Hill Tribe and 
Frontier; Mongols, like Sikkim, or Bhutan — ^but 
lately come under the flag; Shans, from out 
Burma way, coated in scales of gold — one hun- 
dred and forty rulers of the Empire of India, 
whose words are law, whose persons are sacred to 
millions of subjects, yet who are all here to pay 
homage, to follow In the King of England's train. 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 249 

You have seen Clive laying our foundations in 
India; I shall show you another laying them in 
the farther East. 

When the East India Company took Java from 
the Dutch, in the year 1811, one of the Com- 
pany's officials in the Straits, by name Raffles, was 
installed Lieutenant Governor. He ruled wisely 
and constructively, gaining the respect of the 
people, giving the island laws suitable to it, build- 
ing fine roads, even laying out the botanical gar- 
dens at Buitenzorg — the finest in the world. But 
when, after five years, it was decided that Java 
be handed back, he opposed this so tenaciously 
that he fell into disgrace, almost suffered dismis- 
sal; and we hear of him as reduced to the Resi- 
dency of Bencoolen. 

The Dutch again becoming aggressive, our trad- 
ing rights in the Straits were menaced, and John 
Company took stock of the position. Penang and 
Malacca, our main settlements, were none too well 
located, and word was sent to Raffles, the most 
knowledgeable Briton in those parts, to search 
out and secure some more central, strategic station 
without delay. 

His knowledge was unique. And within a 
month or two he had acquired the island of Singa- 
pore. It lay at the extreme point of the Malay 
Peninsula, separated by half a mile of water. 
Twenty-two miles by twelve, rather larger than 



mo THE SHADOW-SHOW 

the Isle of Wight, it was covered with primeval 
forest, and save for a fishing village of Malays 
was uninhabited. The seller was the Sultan of 
Johore; the price paid him was the eastern equiv- 
alent of one barleycorn. 

Raffles had secured the most strategic point in 
the East, the choicest site in the Seven Seas. 
Every vessel sailing to the far East, unless it 
makes detour of hundreds of miles, must pass 
down the Straits of Malacca. On their West lies 
Sumatra, on their East, Malaya; at the South 
end, where they narrow, a host of small islands — 
broken off fragments, as it were, of Sumatra — ^lie 
across the Straits ; and the safest, deepest channel, 
sometimes but a stone's throw wide, is that be- 
tween the nearest islands and Singapore itself. 

This was in 1819. Soon afterwards Raffles, 
his health affected, and still in disgrace, returned 
to England, where he lived in London; and in 
these years he founded the Zoological Gardens. 
By 1826, at the age of forty-six, he was dead. He 
was one of the greatest Englishmen, yet the very 
site of his grave, in the Parish Church of Hendon, 
was not known. 

In April, 1914, this church was being enlarged, 
and under the site of the new Sanctuary they 
found a vault. Here lay Raffles, and here (no 
matter how) I presently descended. The coffin 
lay by itself. The wooden case was rotted away, 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 251 

the leaden shell itself far gone. It was the coffin 
of a small, small man. A shield bore his super- 
scription; the which, as I dusted, came loose, and 
undemeath it a hole was corroded, larger than my 
hand. In all respect and reverence, for I hold 
him one of our greatest, I took out his shoulder- 
blade for a few moments. When I came out of 
the vault, the masons bricked it up; so that be- 
tween his burying, and the blowing of the Last 
Trump, I am the only one who has had truck with 
Stamford Raffles. 

That Raffles knew the value of Singapore, his 
report to the East Indi^ Company bears witness; 
he foretold its future in unmistakable words. Yet 
even he, coming back to the scene a hundred years 
later, would surely be staggered. Where the 
Malay fishing village rested, there rises a city 
with a population of 300,000. Forty races of 
men walk its streets. Miles of wharves, basins 
and dry docks abut on that narrow waterway. It 
is the eighth port of the world; one of the great 
geographical assets of the British Empire; and 
the nucleus of a vast hinterland, which keeps 
growing by leaps and bounds. Singapore, in the 
main, is a Chinese city. It is true that thousands 
of Malays, the people of the country, walk the 
streets; that there are Japanese, Javanese, Arabs 
and the like; that there are many Tamils, Sikhs, 
and other races of India; that there is the Eu- 



252 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

ropean quarter, with its white-suited men; but so 
preponderating are the Chinese, that these others 
seem hardly to count. The city is Chinese — one 
sees that at a glance; how much of the business, 
the real estate, the wealth, is Chinese too, is more 
gradually revealed. So imperial in its setting, 
Singapore is now capital of a great hinterland. 
There are the Straits Settlements. There are the 
Federated Malay States. There are other Malay 
States, come but of late under our protection. 
Nearly the whole Peninsula is ruled from Singa- 
pore. 

Several decades ago all these States were one 
great forest. Malays were settled in the valleys, 
and about the rivers, and the petty Sultans strove 
together unceasingly. In course of time a British 
Resident appeared at each Sultan's court. He 
was duly followed by British miners and plant- 
ers, and by a rush of Chinese, and so the new era 
set in. The gold mines they opened were not 
profitable, losing their values at shallow depth; 
but immense deposits of alluvial tin were found, 
and these, worked mostly by Chinamen, have 
yielded, and continue to yield large profits. 

Then came far-sighted Britishers who cleared 
the forests, and planted rubber trees — the rubber 
of the Amazon Valley. The land was ideal for 
this, inferior only to the Amazon itself, and in a 
few years many thousands of acres had been 



MINE OWN TEOPLE 25S 

cleared, many millions of trees planted. Later, 
came the first tappings, a quickly increasing out- 
put, and the trade's acceptance of the plantation 
product; the Singapore hinterland had evolved 
an industry of the first importance. 

The Government of the Malav States, which 
meanwhile had federated, has not been idle. 
Levying export dues on the two great staples, tin 
and rubber, its income has not onlv exceeded ex- 
penditure, but may be said to have burst the treas- 
ury open. It is the richest government, relatively, 
in the world. Its schools, hospitals, bridges, roads 
and the like are the best money can buy. It owns 
the railroads; it holds priceless assets in Crown 
lands; it has built an elegant little capital at 
Kwala Lumpor; further, the federated sultans, 
emerging from their forests, meet together and 
vote a Dreadnought to the Empire. 

Malaya is become a planter's paradise. End- 
less plantations line the roadsides. Now it is a 
coco-nut forest, now a stretch of pineapples. 
Here is pepper; there tapioca; and the Malays 
still plant their rice. But above all there is rub- 
ber. In the cleanly weeded soil, the trees wave 
over hill and dale, running sometimes for miles 
unbroken. Most have passed their first maturity 
— a girth of eighteen inches, three feet from the 
ground; this is tapping girth, and attached to each 
tree is a small cup for the latex. The rubber is 



254 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

almost exclusively British. Where Malay or 
Chinaman planted, there he left the trees to their 
fate ; and there, as to the sower in scripture, have 
thorns sprung up and choked him. It is awful, 
this Malayan forest growth ! Clear a space, and 
leave it alone ; in a month it is unrecognisable ; in 
a year it is blotted from all knowledge. 

In Perak State lie the principal tin washings. 
Up out of these man-made cavities used to come 
Chinamen in a stream, carrying the tin-bearing 
soil in baskets. This was primitive. Now, the 
more enlightened owners have installed suction 
pumps, and Australian and London ^sompanies 
have erected dredges. As we reach the coast, and 
Penang, rubber plantations again cover the land. 

Penang, oldest of the Straits Settlements, is an 
island one half the size of Singapore, and like it, 
lies hard against the mainland. Mountainous and 
forest clad, it is one of the loveliest islands of the 
East. The botanical gardens, at a distance of 
several miles from the harbour, lie in a basin of 
the hills; and not those of Buitenzorg, not those 
of Rio de Janeiro, can show such forest setting. 
I suppose the spot to have been indicated by Fran- 
cis Light, first Governor of the island, another 
great Englishman in this part of the world. 

Georgetown, the capital, large and prosperous, 
is a great Chinese depot. Singapore, as we have 
seen, is Chinese. Everything is Chinese. These 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 255 

people are the finest colonists we could have had ; 
to say that, under our governance, they are the 
making of Malaya, is but statement of a bald 
fact. 

England's foreign policy, as I see it, can be 
summed up in four words : 'Trestige in the East/' 
The keystone of this is ''Solidity in India," and 
to that I add: ''Friendship with the Chinese.'' 
We are not so strong in China as once we were. 
Parkes has gone. Hart has gone; we have lost 
ground to Japan. All the nations look longingly 
to China. Today we find rivals, where fifty 
years ago were none ; but there is a subtle some- 
thing between Briton and Chinaman that should 
win out for us again. 

This combination of Briton with Chinaman is 
a peculiarly happy one. It is not only a union of 
the two world personalities, but of the two great 
colonisers. Each in his own way has unrivalled 
energy, exceptional self-reliance, and each, in the 
development of new countries, an easy mastery. 

Glance at Hong Kong ! Here is a small, moun-, 
tainous island off the coast of China. Ceded to 
us all but barren, a town springs up, becomes in 
time a city, and now overflows the mountain sides. 
The harbour, pari passu^ becomes the greatest in 
the East, and a vast depot of trade. Hong Kong 
is still growing. More and more Chinese are com- 
ing under her flag. But long ago she showed 



256 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

Briton and Chinaman what they could achieve to- 
gether. 

Here, in Malaya, they have allied forces again. 
Beginning at Singapore, a marvellously chosen 
base, they have already advanced five hundred 
miles. In their wake has followed magic pros- 
perity, and a momentum gathers which should 
carry them further yet. 

Why should the partnership end here? My 
vision of it, frankly, is a vision of a second In- 
dia — an India based on the Chinaman : an Empire 
embracing the Peninsula, stretching from Singa- 
pore through Bangkok to Bhamo, and by sea, from 
the Straits of Malacca to near Chittagong. Bur- 
ma and the Shan States would fall naturally to it. 
The outside Malays would come in. Western 
Siam would belong, and sooner or later, I believe, 
much of Yunnan. A second India! Based 
neither on greed, nor land hunger, this should be 
deliberately created for safety. I would offset 
the Hindu of Clive with the Chinaman of Raf- 
fles. I would balance the two great races of the 
East. 

''Si Monumentum Requiris " If you 

would understand England's meaning to the 
world, consider the East, gaze upon India. If 
you do not know the East, and India, and what 
India means, then hold your peace. For you do 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 257 

not know England. Our stability is bound up 
with India. How much bound up, only those 
who govern and those who have lived in this east- 
em empire can realise. India means everything 
to us. She means more than all the colonies to- 
gether. She is linked to us hand and foot; they 
but by sentiment, which a moment's strain might 
sever. She has brought out the best that is in 
us; she has rounded our character. England's 
strength, and her prestige, is her lordship in the 
East, her control in India; when we lose these,, 
our place in the world is gone. We could not 
withdraw if we would. If we withdrew, a hun- 
dred jarring races would be at each other's throats, 
and the butchery of pusillanimous Hindus for 
their wealth and their women would be appall- 
ing. If we withdrew, it would be but to make 
room for someone else. We must be in India for 
all time. 

Who are those who denounce us about India? 
I tell them they do not know the facts. We ex- 
ploit the country — of course we do — but not cyni- 
cally. We draw wealth from India. But the 
Indians are fast piling up wealth themselves. 
Look at Bombay! Where will you find richer 
communities than the Parsees, the Bohras, the 
Banians? Look at Rangoon, where owners re- 
fuse £10,000 an acre for land on the foreshore! 
Look at the native wealth stored in the Punjab, 



258 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

in Benares, in Calcutta! The currency of India 
is silver; yet I estimate that seven hundred mil- 
lion sovereigns have gone into India, and will 
never come out again. It has been written : "gold 
is a metal dug up in Africa, to be buried in India," 
and as things look now, all the gold in circulation 
will eventually disappear there. So much for 
British greed ! 

No, the argument is unsound; the British have 
put more into India than they ever took out. 
There is some unrest in India. There is in all 
lands. It comes in this case from a fractional 
minority, half-educated, unused, and dissatisfied, 
who think they can govern themselves. This mi- 
nority is largely Hindu: if we withdrew, they 
would go down before the frontier tribes — the 
followers of Mahomet — as corn before the reaper. 
But we make mistakes too. We encourage young 
Indians to be educated in England. They go to 
the universities, they mix with us, they are treated 
as social equals. Then they go home, and are 
treated as inferiors. Is it surprising that they 
nurse anti-British ideals? The caste of the 
Anglo-Indian is rigid as that of the Hindu. With 
the natives, if he is not genial, he at least is just; 
but the Eurasians — ^half-caste men of his own 
blood — ^he cruelly ignores. Yet I have found all 
men human. These men of colour would re- 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 259 

spond; treat them with consideration, and they 
will help you to hold India. 

These poor peoples of India — for they are 
mostly peasants and mostly poor — are a sacred 
charge on us. They look to the white man to pro- 
tect them, to hold the scales of justice. Educa- 
tion they do not need : it is futile as yet ; missions, 
too, are doubtful; but an assured food supply, 
medical treatment, irrigation, good land laws, 
the control of usurers and extortioners — these are 
the things England is called on to provide, and 
they do not call in vain. How could India really 
govern herself? Whom would she rally round? 
Whom would she look to? To the Nizam? To 
the Gaekwar? To some Bengali mystic? To a 
Brahmin? To a Mahomedan? To a Sikh? To 
aMahratta? To a Rajput? To a Ghurka? To 
a Pathan? The idea is fantastic. India is not 
one people, but a hundred peoples. She is not 
swayed by one prince, but by a hundred princes. 
In all her history no one Indian gained her will- 
ing allegiance, and those who gained the most 
won and held by the sword. There was Akbar — 
greatest of all. Yet he rose to power from out a 
sea of blood, and on all his borders, during a long 
reign, there was continuous war. He was a man 
of the truest nobility, of the deepest religious tol- 
erance, yet but few of the princes loved him; the 
rest feared him, biding their time. 



260 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

An independent India there will not be. In- 
dia is bone of our bone by now, a unit deep within 
the British Empire. But if these communities, 
these different races ask for responsible govem- 
ment within that empire — that is a different mat- 
ter. Can we refuse this? Can we refuse if but 
one in a hundred understands? It is true thes^ 
people are dark skinned. They are Orientals. 
They do not see with western eyes. They never 
will. But they are our own people. They are 
lovable. There are ties between us stretching 
back centuries; and again I say: "if they ask for 
this thing, can we refuse it?" 

They have asked. And we, with great search- 
ings of heart, have promised. We have pledged 
ourselves to responsible government, or something 
very like it, in India. It is a big and daring 
pledge. A landmark in our history. But if the 
Indians "'make good,'' their political emancipa- 
tion now stretches clear before them; for we shall 
keep our pledge. 

I believe we have done right. I believe in al- 
ways putting responsibility. But I do not expect 
the Indians to make good — certainly not in our 
time. There are individuals — there are always 
individuals — but this century will not see five 
per cent, of the people fit for the task. That they 
can talk, is fully granted. That many Bengalis 
have a subtler intellect than our own, is granted. 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 261 

That numerous Sikhs and Mahrattas have a cer- 
tain forcefulness, those who know them will ad- 
mit. But that, our example and help withdrawn, 
they can govern^ hold the balance between races 
and religions, deal out justice to rich and poor, to 
the Brahmin and the outcast alike, handle money 
honestly, I cannot really believe. But it will be 
a r?re experiment. 

Loving England, I would tell of her strength; 
but in no dithyramb : loving her, I must show you 
her weakness too. Her strength is her ''char- 
acter.'' The character of the British, as real as 
it is intangible, is humanity's best asset. This 
"'character" has little to do with brains or morals. 
It is built up of respect for the law, the strongly 
developed sense of justice, liberty, and fair-play, 
a fairly high standard in money matters, and un- 
failing common sense. In one word, it is halance. 
That is our secret. We have balance, and because 
of it have been called, naturally and inevitably, 
to rule over half the world. Then again, we are 
the personality among the nations — we, and the 
Chinese — and the richest in the Old World. 

These things — our balance, our personality, our 
wealth — bring us the respect of all peoples. We 
may not be loved, but we are respected. Our 
prestige is tremendous ; the prestige of an English 
gentleman is assured all over the earth. 



262 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

This "balance'' of ours, this ruling facility, is 
unquestioned; yet to say all the British possess it 
would be far wide of the mark. I speak of a 
million or two million individuals in each genera- 
tion, men and women, high and low, who leaven 
the rest. These, who know instinctively the high- 
est interests of our race, have always counted, and 
still count for very much indeed. It is only yes- 
terday that this generation of them, fighting with 
their backs to the wall, pulled England through 
her peril. 

Among us, as amongst other races, it is the 
few who count; to class the ruck of England su- 
perior to the ruck of France or Germany would 
not be justified. The tradition that our soldiers 
are the bravest, our sailors the best, our artisans 
the most skilful, that, in general, a Briton is worth 
more than others, will not hold; with us, as else- 
where, mediocrity abounds. We have character. 
Our greatest are of the very greatest ; but in aver- 
age, we are neither brainy nor brilliant. Men- 
tally, French or Italians are more subtle; by the 
side of educated Russians we are children, and in 
the United States ten new thoughts are seething 
for one here. As a nation we rank mentally low, 
and to complete the picture, our education has 
been appalling. The mass of our people are dull 
and insular. They have their good points, but 
mentality is not of them ; of our splendid history 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 263 

they know little, and care less, they often go 
soggy with beer, and the gorgeous outer world, 
with its peoples, means nothing to them at alL 
Without her two million, believe me. Britain 
would cut no world figure. 

When the Great War broke out, in 1914, we 
British found ourselves up against a new kind 
of reality. At home, our land had rested in- 
violable well nigh a thousand years. Abroad, we 
had built up our Empire, and fought our wars 
against native races. Now, here came the Ger- 
mans, a white race, hurling themselves upon us. 
It was the blonde brute, the Teuton gone mad; 
yet it was unthinkable, to nineteen Britons in 
twenty, that he could strike at our heart; the 
British Navy, our wealth, our resources, our pres- 
tige, placed us far beyond Germany's reach. 

But the twentieth man knew. Men knew who 
had lived in Germany, had seen her pass slowly, 
surely under the obsession of welt-macht^ knew 
her military strength, knew her to be organised as 
one man ; knew, and knowing, greatly feared. 

And they were right. For four years Britain 
passed through the Valley of Death. On land, 
again and again, our armies were sent reeling. 
Our cities were bombed from the air. On the 
seas — Nelson's seas — our warships were sunk, 
hundreds of our merchantmen blown to pieces. 



264 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

Our wealth was dissipated; our credit lowered in 
the eyes of the world. Britain was Britain still, 
but all her foundations were shaken. 

:{c ^ ^ H^ H^ :ic 

Now the war is over. It is a January evening 
when I write, and upon our Northern land her 
wintriness has again descended ; as I sit before the 
fire, gazing into the embers, my thoughts go back 
over the dreadful past. 

Of what is England thinking to-night? I 
warrant you not of victory, nor cheers, nor wav- 
ing banners. My own thoughts are a sort of 
dazed wonder, a deep humility; round about a 
thousand firesides there must be others thinking 
the same. Germany, the wild beast, lies at last 
in the dust. But it took half the world on her 
back to bring her down ; and the whole world came 
near going down with her. Her cause was a 
brutal cause; yet the Germans fought four years 
wholeheartedly, powerfully, with the utmost 
bravery, and a greater military skill than is re- 
corded in history. Given our navy, and command 
of the seas, given our resources and material, what 
might Germany not have done? Could the Brit- 
ish, fighting the world in a good cause, have 
achieved all the Germans achieved in a bad one? 

My thoughts go out to our allies: to France, 
and all her great generals; to Belgium, for those 
ten precious days of August ; to the peasant army 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 265 

of Servia; to Italy; to the Russia that was; with- 
out these allies where, I wonder, had the world 
been reeling to-night? Especially my thoughts 
go out to America, in name not an ally, yet the 
most relevant of them all. Late to enter the war, 
she came in with tremendous momentum. Her 
money, her food, her war materials, her vast re- 
sources were thrown freely on the scale — so freely 
that the enemy was shaken; and once her great 
army took the field the end was in sight. 

Germany, the wild beast, lies dead. Upon our 
Empire fell the main strain in those years, and 
upon our Old England the brunt: in the world's 
eyes we emerge as victors, and yet — I cannot 
cheer. The England of our dreams, our boasts, 
where is she? Those seven hundred thousand 
of our dead are she; but in the fabric of the liv- 
ing there are deep rents and seams. 

Selfishness has taken England. Clever and 
crafty men and women — tens of thousands of 
them — ^made gain out of the war. While our true 
men fought, and our true women worked, these 
sleek ones span their web, and out of our land's 
danger made their money. Their example has 
wrought England untold harm. Their vulgar 
ostentation will continue to do so. 

They helped to bring us measurably near finan- 
cial collapse. Today — England owes eight thou- 
sand million pounds, owes her broken soldiers. 



266 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

owes her orphans, and must brace herself to the 
heaviest taxation for many years to come. 

Even in the old days the idle rich of England 
were an eyesore. Not those who made the money : 
they, as a rule, were strong, self-reliant, incor- 
ruptible. But those who inherited it, the drones 
who spent it. They toiled not, neither did they 
spin. Their lives were passed in idleness — at golf, 
shooting, fishing, fox-hunting, or in dilettante 
travel: they were parasites, of no value to the 
country. 

These people had lost their bearings, had run 
to seed. They were fine material — wasted. 
When the war came, every man of them went to 
fight, every woman to work. The men officered 
the new armies. Under conditions that appalled, 
they developed character, balance, and such quali- 
ties of leadership that the troops would follow 
them to hell. But, alas! with the coming of 
peace, they return to their loafing, to their aim- 
less routine. And when they have been joined by 
the many families of the war profiteers, the eye- 
sore of England's rich will be greater than before. 

The labouring classes shamed England too. 
There were, of course, many of these who fought 
bravely, many men and women at home who 
worked, and worked hard; but there were endless 
strikes during the war, eternal bickerings in the 
face of our deadly peril. We had to bribe labour 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 267 

often to carry on. If the rich profiteers were con- 
temptible, so were these many labour groups ; their 
callousness, their unjust demands, undermined the 
whole State. 

And still do. Today, after victory, after 
peace, after all England has done to raise the 
standard of living, I see labour more disgruntled, 
more capricious, nursing a deeper hate — in a word, 
more selfish — than ever before. This is the deep- 
est rent in our fabric. There are many labour 
men in England today drunk with power, head- 
ing for revolution. England's past is nought to 
them. That she is Europe's sheet anchor is 
nought. That their fathers and brothers died of 
late for England they care not at all. Only they 
think of themselves, of their power, and of pulling 
down to gratify that power; they are traitors to 
their country, and most detestable. 

Yet I am not dismayed. The world may 
crash. Half Europe may fall. But England will 
not fall. She sways today. She will be hard 
put to it for years to come. But she will get 
through. Have we not the gifts of law and or- 
der? Have we not that unfailing common sense? 
Have we not our character? Our balance? The 
nation will discipline itself. If the revolutionists 
behind labour are out for trouble, they shall find 
trouble. But if the solid men gain control, and 



268 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

carry labour sanely towards power, they shall 
have a fair and sympathetic deal. 

That immense debt must be paid off, and we 
shall bravely face a taxation which must be very 
heavy. If it can be shown that a levy on the 
well-to-do is of real good to the State, I, for one, 
shall gladly surrender my share. We have but 
to set ourselves to this task in earnest. Behind 
us is our world-wide trade, ever growing; our vast 
shipping to carry it ; sixty per cent, of the output 
• of gold, to finance it ; and thousands of the world's 
astutest and solidest traders (and I do not forget 
the Americans), to bring it to fruition. 

Shaken as we have been, we yet bring great 
assets out of the war. Our King is trusted. In 
our years of trial he showed himself a steadfast 
man, doing his duty, always sharing in self-denial 
with his people. In these days, when ^'Divine 
Right" doth no longer hedge a king, the common 
sense trust of his people is a greater thing to him 
by far. So long as our Empire holds together, so 
long must we have a visible head, a link; and then 
he is the Emperor of India. Under him, the war 
threw up Douglas Haig — the very man to lead 
our armies, and typifying those armies down to 
the ground. We do not think of him as subtle or 
brilliant; but the English character^ the Scotch 
dourness^ the balance^ the seeing it through, day 
by day, to the end, were there all the time I 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 269 

Our military position, too, is assured. Five 
years ago, across the North Sea, lay that dreadful 
menace. But today there is no menace, nor any 
power in Europe which can threaten. For the 
British Army one need never fear again, nor for 
the martial instincts of the people. 

Once the British Navy was our first — our last 
line of defence. The war showed that Britain 
rules the waves still ; but under the waves she was 
grasped by the throat, nearly strangled to death. 
Our position, dwellers on an island, growing but 
half our food, is gravely compromised by the 
submarine. There is no real answer as yet to its 
menace. The convoy system, and the depth 
charge, do but palliate the menace; a Channel 
Tunnel is something of an answer, though, and 
growing more food at home; and to these two 
things the country must set itself. The battle- 
ship, threatened under water, is become vulner- 
able from the air, too, and here again our future 
seems charged with danger. Yet I am not ap- 
palled. The war has shewn Britain, and the Do- 
minions, taking to the air, and there displaying 
such nerve, such mechanical genius as to approach 
mastery. I see the next war waged fiercely, per- 
haps predominately, in the air, and I urge our 
people to prepare, but in all confidence, for this 
new warfare of tomorrow. 

Our Empire stretches world-wide — ^vaster than 



«70 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

ever. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South 
Africa — the older dominions — full fledged now, 
prepare to leave us : not in sentiment, not in race- 
instincts, but as managing utterly their own af- 
fairs. India receives notable allowance of self- 
government, and even the Egyptians — an inferior 
people — receive the first instalment. Thus, to a 
great extent, England is at a parting of the ways. 

On the other hand, there are the Crown Colo- 
nies, the vast Asian and vaster African Protec- 
torates, and islands all over the world, growing 
up, getting ready to take their place. Their col- 
oured peoples, and that under our aegis, keep 
gaining in education, in wealth, in national con- 
sciousness ; they are going to keep our administra- 
tors at full pressure for generations to come. 

And there are all the territories fallen to us 
after the war: there is Mesapotomia, where irri- 
gation will bring about utmost fertility ; Palestine, 
and the leadership of the Jews; suzerainty over 
Arabia; the almost suzerainty over Persia — in- 
deed, the war forces upon us, and that without our 
seeking it, the trusteeship of the Near, the Mid- 
dle, and much of the Far East — the East of our 
affinity. The vista opened up is almost stagger- 
ing. If Britain to herself remains but true, her 
career, so far from ending, is only about to begin ! 

Finally, most vital, most precious of all, are 
those two millions. I have been in every land, 



MINE OWN PEOPLE 271 

and I tell you again that these, this backbone of 
the British race, are humanity's best asset. With 
all their faults, with all their limitations, you may 
place your trust in them. They have pulled Eng- 
land through in the old days. With their backs 
to the wall, they have pulled her through again — 
doggedly, not gloriously though; and if the mass, 
the great herd, with the bit in their teeth, do not 
run violently down a steep place into the sea, 
they will pull England through again, and save 
Europe, in the critical years which are to come. 



CHAPTER XII 



"through the seventh gate" 



Do you remember that blue dome, the tomb 
of the Agha's father at Teheran, that flashed in 
the sun, and grew dull again, and changed colour 
with every cloud in the sky? That is like our 
world — the Shadow-Show; joy and misery, good 
and evil, are crossing our sky from birth to death, 
and our moods reflect them as those old Persian 
tiles reflected the heavens. There are days when 
I know myself a god, when all things bend to my 
will. And there come times, as surely, when I 
writhe in my depression, and the waves close over 
my head. Who or what am I? for I myself do 
not know. But a moment agone I was a patriot, 
a thinker for England ; yet at this moment, all the 
evil and the misery of the world sweep before me, 
and I know myself, in a wider field, a grappler 
with disillusion. 

Humanity is shrieking of its progress, and I do 
not see it. Change in material things I see — 
profound change; but of ethical advance, that 
blending of human nature with the Divine Es- 
sence that must lie behind things, there seems no 
vestige. 

272 



"THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 273 

Can you see progress? Is machinery, with its 
great steamers, swift trains, submarines, and air- 
ships that are to drop dynamite progress? Is 
rapid travel progress, or greater commercial tum- 
over, or the Stock Exchange, or party politics? 
Are our law courts progress, where rich litigants 
wear poor ones to death; or our newspapers, 
which, mad for a sensation, would plunge the peor 
pies into war? 

We are envolving. Our brains are become sub- 
tle, our organism complex, our nerves raise us 
to heights, depress us to depths, the earlier men 
never knew. Yet we have left the vital problems 
unsolved. Selfishness, jealousy, and hate have 
come through unscathed, as have love, effort, and 
courage; human nature stands just where the Crea- 
tor left it. 

Let us open the window of humanity and take 
stock of our so-called ''progress." Strange, angry 
cries reach us from all directions. These are not 
the cries of idealists, who see the absolute stand- 
ards set at naught, but of partizans, fighting man 
against man, creed against creed, nation against 
nation. The cries of humanity are only factional 
cries; the waming about those two who went up 
into the temple to pray is forgotten, and intoler- 
ance is roaring at large. 

Intolerance, in nations as in men, is a symptom • 
the disease is ignorance — crystallization of mind, 



274 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

to be feared by us as our fathers feared the devil. 
In this twentieth century, as ever, the nations are 
vain-glorious and self-righteous. Majorities are 
patriotic, rarely critical, yet brains, energy, brav- 
ery, altruism — the things we value — are wide- 
spread as the world; good and bad are not to be 
localized. 

Do you hear a piercing cry rising momentarily 
above the rest? That is the English denouncing 
the Congo, who shout, ''Down with Red Rubber 
and the Slave Gang!" The charge is true — ex- 
aggerated, yet in essence true. Slavery has ex- 
isted there, and torture, and Belgium is stained. 
Yet who are we to cry out? Are there not in 
London, at our own door, many beings as miser- 
able and degraded as any in the Congo? Read, 
too, as I did some years ago, an official report on 
the natives of West Australia and their treatment. 
It was horrible. It was worse than slavery. 

And what of our opium trade? What of the 
Indian Government, the greatest opium merchant 
in the world, who for many years made millions 
of profit out of China, and only of late relin- 
quished this revenue? 

"Oh,'' reply the English, "if India hadn't sold 
opium to China, some one else would. Better we 
than they." 

"Quite so, quite so!" murmured astute old 
Leopold of Belgium. "Our case is a similar one. 



'THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 275 

If we hadn't forced the natives to work, and to 
collect rubber, their own chiefs would do so. Bet- 
ter we than they/' 

Or turn to America. The Yankees fix their 
eagle eye on the wrongs of Finland or Armenia. 
A mass meeting of denouncement is called in Bos- 
ton, where, as it closes, ten thousand perspiring 
ratepayers stand and sing: — 

"My country, 'tis of thcc, 
Sweet land of liberty." 

And out in the street newsboys are calling. There 
has been a massacre of blacks in Georgia by the 
mob. A white woman has been outraged by a 
negro; to avenge her, some twenty innocent and 
respectable men have been shot and burned at the 
stake. 

"Home was never like this!" think the Finns. 

There are worse things, though, than intoler- 
ance, darker shadows that cross our sky; disease 
is one, and grinding poverty, and the drink traffic, 
and the unfit, and the misery that stalks at noon- 
day. 

What is our vaunted civilisation? For the 
rich, for the well-to-do, it is a soft cushion, a bed 
of feathers; but they must not look beneath, for 
it rests, ultimately, on an army of the very poor. 
The poor are always and fearfully with us, and 
as our wealth increases so does their degradation. 
Actual hunger they often know, actual want; 



276 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

while wearing anxiety, bad food, insufRcient 
warmth and sleep and leisure and happiness is 
their lot from beginning to end. 

Poverty belongs to the scheme of things. You 
may pay robust labour all it demands, and believe 
the poor abolished, but there are millions of the 
weak, the inefficient, the ill-equipped for life, 
whom you never reach. And the more wealth 
and luxury at the top, the keener, the more poig- 
nant poverty at the bottom. The fcnisery of 
European cities we know; and there are tenement 
streets in New York or Chicago, the land of 
promise, which may well give the optimist pause. 

These people are slaves. We cannot explain 
the ugly word away. They dare not have wills 
of their own, wants of their own. Such beings 
have no reserve fund, nor can they build one up. 
They live from hand to mouth. They have rarely 
twenty- four hours' start from hunger; if they fall, 
they fall for ever, and the ranks close in. 

We mean well, no doubt; but that inexorable 
thing, the law of supply and demand, is the real 
factor. Do you hear a sort of deep rumbling? 
It is the new generation coming along. There 
are millions of them ! Millions more slaves — teni 
for one man's place — and the clergy are egging 
the people to breed ! 

Hurrah for a denser population ! See how the 
capitalists and the great employers leer, washing 



'^THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 277 

their hands with invisible soap ! Labour is cheap 
today ! 

Forget, a moment, the poor and degraded, and 
take note of this dreadful army who approach. 
These are the mentally and bodily unfit, on their 
way to get married. They go with the good 
wishes of society and the Church. With light 
hearts they will beget children, bestowing on 
them physical and mental heritages from which 
there is no escape. But you must not interfere, 
we allow these things ; those of us who know the 
facts are too cowardly to protest. Some of these 
men are partis^ and your British mother is a 
dragon w^hen the parti appears. Who said 
''phthisis"? Heaven help such officious wight! 

Let us close the window again. The tale of 
evil and misery and futility is but half told, yet 
told enough. 

All religions die in time. Their early, virile 
conceptions become lost in a maze of mysticism, 
ritual, and dogma. Our religion is dying this 
way. She is but a shell now; and vestments and 
wafers and oriented genuflections and intonings 
and Athanasian creeds and burning candles are 
what she offers as the Waters of Life. 

The Church has lost its hold. By refusing to 
come in line with modem thought, it alienates 
those who think. What signifies an audience of 
old women or flighty girls, when the brainy men 



278 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

of the community are in their libraries or out on 
the links? 

The man who gives the Churches the go-by is 
not a bad man. He is, more often than not, the 
thinking man; and when he thinks what religion 
was meant to be, and what it has become, he 
laughs aloud. WTiat are dogmas to him? Will 
they bring peace to Ireland? Will they breed 
sj^mpathy between labour and capital? The 
''two-and-seventy jarring sects," with their va- 
garies, their narrowness, cause him amusement 
rather than otherwise. 

Our thinker is a traveller, and he notes — in 
China, in Zululand, in Central Africa, in a hun- 
dred foreign parts — a great dissipation of money 
and cntrgy in missionary effort. Some of it seems 
to be good, some bad, and the greater part use- 
less. The heathen, who have neither our wants 
nor our complex organisms, are, on the whole, 
happy and contented. If one thing in the world 
is certain, it is that the heathen are happier than 
our own submerged, whose need for uplifting is 
in all senses greater. 

Our thinking man is kindly and tolerant; 
when he hears of Christian Churches denying the 
rites of burial to some poor suicide, venting their 
rancour on him, dead, on his family, living, it 
makes his blood boil. WTio are we to assail these 
poor tortured creatures? What had their final 



"THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 279 

agonies to do with us? ''Judge not, that ye be 
not judged," my lord Archbishop of Canterbury! 

One hundred and seventy-one Bishops of the 
Anglican Church assemble at Lambeth, and they 
make decision, by 87 votes to 84, to deny the 
blessing of the Church to the innocent party in 
a divorce who may marry again. Pshaw! You 
old men are no doubt well-meaning, but you don't 
knovj. You must adapt yourselves to modem in- 
tellect, or it will presently pass over you like a 
steam-roller. Moreover, such a union is legal to 
the State, and yours is a State Church. Go care- 
fully, if you would escape disestablishment! 
There are social dignities and fat endowments 
some of you would ill surrender. 

Religion, as we have evolved it, is become a 
flabby thing. It is a creed for the well-to-do, a 
creed of the tall hat, whose votaries dare not peer 
below the surface of things. We are concerned 
with the supernatural, with miracles, with three 
Gods who are one God; scornful of science, we 
treat sin and misery as casual factors, removable 
by prayer, and ignore the Reign of Law through 
which we move from birth to death. 

Does our religion look into the causes of things? 
No! It ignores scientific inquiry. Empiric, cred- 
ulous, it thinks to cure by indiscriminate charity, 
and floods the country with organisations which 
pauperise the masses, breed parasites, and ruin 



280 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

the character of the lower classes wholesale. 
Christianity can give men money. My religion 
would teach men to earn it. 

And our ethics are become flabby. We build 
free sanatoria^ we glory in saving the lives of con- 
sumptives and weaklings generally. Well and 
good. Then we allow them to breed ! Under the 
segis of the Churches an orgy of generation goes 
on. The unfit breed, and the mentally weak, and 
the degenerates, and the submerged, whose im- 
mense families overflow into State homes or work- 
houses. Owing to our flabby brand of religion, 
which welcomes the halt and the maimed and the 
half-witted, we are vitiating the strain to the last 
degree; we are blocking the likeliest of all paths 
of human progress. 

If this be the way of constructive Christianity, 
I declare for the other way. I would take in hand 
paupers, drunkards, loafers, criminals; I would 
spend on them — on our own problems — the mon- 
eys now wasted on the happy heathen, and I 
would start scientific reform. Some of these 
would be reformed; quite as many would be un- 
reformable, and these latter, whom you now fill 
with bread and soup and allow to perpetuate the 
race, I would sterilise, or keep rigidly apart. If 
they worked, they should live; but the lunatics, 
the degenerates, without qualm on my part, would 
go to a painless death. 



"THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 281 

Now let me ponder. 

Reason sits in her seat today, and I know 
things are not what they seem. Do you think 
that in a thousand guesses theologian or philos- 
opher has reached the heart of things? No — not 
in a myriad ! Our meaning, in time and space, is 
utterly vague. Could we but gaze on the white 
light of reality, all our codes must shrivel up, 
Christian and agnostic alike stand aghast. 

This is the Shadow-Show. It is no figure of 
speech. We men and women, who come we know 
jiot whence, go we know not whither, who move 
through a world we do not comprehend, in the 
grip of inexorable laws we cannot explain, are 
the Shadows of all time. 

The ''Reign of Law" holds us as in a vice. 
Nature, who can be kind, as she can be infinitely 
cruel, makes her sport of us. Of her ultimate de- 
cision there is no faintest hint. 

The world around us. Nature materialised, is 
a beautiful world; I, of all men, know that. But 
under her beauty, what awful forces lurk, what 
inexorable laws! 

The Law of Life, be it for man, animal, or 
plant, is the same — struggle. Eat or be eaten. 
Overthrow or be overthrown. Stand firm or be 
swept aside. The strong and the adaptable sur- 
vive, as they were meant; they are effective and 
joyous, finding life, on the whole, a pleasant 



282 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

thing. The weak and the unfit fail and die, as 
they were meant; they are ineffective, altogether 
futile, and for them life is ugly and wretched. 

There is Cause and Effect — a thing so inexor- 
able, and so relentless, as to rivet our keenest 
faculties. 

Cause and Effect is the manifestation. Behind 
it lies the law, and the law I take to be the '"inter- 
relation" — the oneness — of all things. 

We have seen, in these very pages, how a stop- 
page of tram-cars in Delhi, some years ago, was 
a direct result of the marriage of Mahomet's 
daughter with Ali, in the seventh century. We 
have seen that the discovery of silver at Potosi, 
in 1545, led to Roosevelt becoming President of 
the United States in 1901; the two events occur 
356 years apart, yet their inter-relation is un- 
doubted. > 

Now consider an example, supposititious yet 
not improbable, which we will ourselves con- 
struct. ' 

A London paper receives important news, and 
issues a special edition. The sub-editor, pleased 
with the look of the ''extra,'' and with the celerity 
displayed, takes a sovereign from his pocket, and 
gives it to the compositor mainly concerned. This 
man, with a large family, living on the border-line 
of debt, has an ailing child, and uses the windfall 
to take his child to a specialist. The specialist. 



(( 



THROUGH THE SE\TNTH GATE" 288 



examining, sees an unusual development of dis- 
ease, and following this up, makes a minor dis- 
covery in pathology. He writes an article on this 
which is published in a medical journal. Another 
doctor buys a copy of this journal, and accident- 
ally leaves it, opened at the article in question, on 
a table in a tea-shop. A woman next occupies his 
seat; she sees the open journal, and her eyes note 
the words, *'We must now proceed to diag- 
nose. . . .'" The syllable "nose" becomes con- 
notative, and she proceeds to use her handker- 
chief with some violence. Returning it to her 
reticule, she notes with satisfaction the initials 
embroidered in the corner, and starts off to order 
a dozen more at Marshall and Snelgrove's. 

We will not accompany her up Bond Street, 
nor try to follow up the effects of the composi- 
tor's gratitude, the child's treatment, the special- 
ist's future, the thousands to be benefited by his 
discovery, and the changes wrought in their for- 
tunes; but we will note this: that just as vibra- 
tions, from a stone cast into a pond, reach every 
drop of water in that pond so, sooner or later, 
every man and woman in the world, and most 
things living and dead, would be, some in greater, 
scMne in lesser degree, brought into touch through 
that act of the editor, that giving of a small piece 
of yellow metaL I need not further elaborate. 
The inter-relation of all things, mental and ma- 



284 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

terial, the '"oneness" of the Universe, is absolute, 
and our connection with the great mosaic utterly 
close, utterly inextricable; a wine merchant may 
sneeze and the destinies of Denmark be affected, 
a billiard professional travel second-class and the 
price of tea harden perceptibly. 

There must be a meaning of Cause and Effect, 
and of this inter-relation of things. I believe it 
to be that all things are the manifestations of 
some ONE THING — some all-embracing medium — 
receiving into itself, and giving out again, the 
myriad permutations of matter and mind, of be- 
ing and not-being, that make up the universe. 

Let us take this problem, this search for the 
ONE THING, to the physicists. These men have 
been probing very deeply into the heart of 
things; they are going to be — they now are — 
nearer to the Infinite than all the mystics, all the 
metaphysicians who ever lived. 

"You in search of one thing?" cry the physi- 
cists. "So are we. From the time Mendeleeff 
rounded off the Periodic Law, we have known that 
all elements, all matter, must be variations of 
some underlying one thing. Furthermore, the 
discoveries of radio-active substances, and their 
extraordinary metamorphoses, have set us hot on 
the scent." (Here follows a physical dissertation 
on atoms, and on the electron — one thousand 
times smaller again.) 



"THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE'' 285 

We need not follow the atomic discoveries ; but 
we must listen to the words of a President of the 
British Association, to the words of the man with 
the most penetrative brain in England today: 
'^ . . for the most natural view to take, as a 
provisional hypothesis, is that matter is just a col- 
lection of positive and negative units of elec- 
tricity/' 

These units are the electrons — mere whiffs of 
energy; yet these whiffs of energy seem to be 
not only the basis of the universe, but the universe 
itself. They are energ}% yet their inconceivable 
rapidity of movement causes them to assume sub- 
stance. Matter would thus seem to be bora out 
of energy; and a bunch of grapes, a wardrobe, a 
man, a star, are merely so many impalpable elec- 
trons, grouped in varying atomic structures, and 
revolving inside their atoms with a force truly 
appalling. 

If the physicists are right, matter is merely 
energy in violent movement; energy looms up 
as the ultimate basis of the universe, the one 
THING, and our Shadow-Show becomes a reality! 

I, too, will set a provisional hypothesis before 
you: — 

"If matter is energy, brain is, and all that 
brain brings into being; it follows that thought 
and will are energy, and many, if not all, forms 



286 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

of good and evil, happiness and misery. And be- 
ing energy, they are indestructible. 

"Inherent in this subtle energy which may 
underlie all things, as it is inherent in electricity, 
must be 'polarity/ The forces we call good and 
evil, happiness and misery, and all the positive 
and negative forces of life, are polarized forms 
of energy. They are balancing factors in the 
structure of things." 

I feel that "polarity'* or "'balance" may be the 
master-key to the universe. A universe of energy, 
with a guiding Lrain in control, would establish 
itself along just such lines. The theory of ''bal- 
ance," looked into deeply, shows so world-wide a 
tendency as to suggest a law. Balance permeates 
all things; there seems to be no positive without 
a negative, no negative without a positive. We 
may liken the universe to a mass of grains of 
sand, so tightly packed that a man's finger pressed 
into one part of the mass will cause a bulging, 
exactly equal to the depression, at some other part. 
In other words, for each movement, each happen- 
ing, each thought in the universe, there is a bal- 
ancing condition set up. We may not see it, we 
may not realise it; but in some form, mental or 
material, palpable or impalpable, it is inexorably 
there. 

If energy forms the fabric of the universe, and 
balance should be its law, where do we stand? 



^^HROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 28T 

We see now that evil and misery, and all the 
negative forces, may be part of the fabric itself, 
and indestructible, but so, too, are good, and hap- 
piness, and all the positixe forces; the position 
might be worse. It is because there is evil that 
there can be its balancer — good; it is because there 
is poverty that there can be those who alleviate; it 
is because there is disease that there can be those 
who heal; the policeman gains promotion at the 
expense of the criminal, and the barrister wealth 
because men still hate; it takes, literally, all sorts 
to make a world. 

In a "balanced" universe, the evil side of 
things is a necessary condition. You think not? 
Well, we shall test it, on conventional religious 
lines. A famous divine, before a vast congrega- 
tion, prays to the Almighty to abolish disease from 
the world, and the Almighty hears, and answers. 
Disease ceases. But at the same time cease, from 
disuse, medicine, surgery, research work, nursing, 
hygiene, antiseptics, drainage, and such personal 
qualities as cleanliness, self-denial, caution, and 
fortitude — that is to say, many of the noblest 
paths of endeavour, many of the finest qualities 
known to man. Disease has gone; but so have its 
balancing factors. The same could be demon- 
strated with the other negative forces ; so that the 
''calling-in" of all sin, all misery, by the Al- 
mighty, would mean the simultaneous disappear- 



288 THE SHADOW-SHOW 

ance of all active good and happiness. There 
would be general running down of the fabric to a 
neutral condition; humanity would exist on a far 
lower level than before. 

I have verged towards that hateful thing — 
metaphysics; that way lies mental sterility. But 
this I feel : the things we have dealt with — Inter- 
relation, Polarity, Balance — are not casual fac- 
tors ; they fit, could we but find the key, into some 
vast generalization, with an appalling simplicity. 

And sin and misery — they are not casual fac- 
tors. If ''balance" be the key, they have a tre- 
mendous purpose of their own, they are subject 
to inexorable law, and not tears, fastings, nor the 
exorcisms of white-robed clergy, are going to turn 
them one hair's-breadth aside. 

Beyond the veil there is Oneness — Oneness that 
may be white, whizzing Energy; and the subtle 
brain of it, the Permeating Essence, is God. This 
is a true God; no jealous, capricious deity, fash- 
ioned by the minds, swayed by the conflicting 
prayers of little men, but a Force of immeasur- 
able power and finality. This is a God to wor- 
ship ! 

And for you, for me, what lies beyond? Does 
our caravan start for the ''Dawn of Nothing,'* 
or is there, far away over the desert, a fair oasis? 
What of those who have gone ahead? What of 
that dead multitude who sleep on the uplands 



"THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 289 

of Samarkand? As I stood beside them the sun 
went down, and it was night, yet was the night 
calm and peaceful. What of them? 

In Shadowland there is vast interrogation. The 
figures are dancing on the curtain, and there is 
furious movement as of yore. 

But what do we shadows know? 

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on. 
And our little life is rounded with a sleep." 



